


Gethsemane

by orphan_account



Series: The Garden Collection [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Black Character(s), Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky deserves fluff, Bucky finds peace for now, Cliffhanger, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hydra (Marvel), Non-Explicit Sex, Original Character(s), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Before Bucharest, there was Bearhooke.After the events in Washington, D.C., Bucky finds himself far west after a year of being a nomad. In the town of Bearhooke, Idaho, Bucky lets his guard down and finds a sliver of peace, the only peace he's known in 70 years. But will it last?--------------------------------------------She stood and handed him his coat. “Okay. Thanks again for this, it was nice. We should do it more often,” she said, trying her best to sound like her normal, nonchalant self.“I wouldn’t mind that,” Bucky grinned. He chose this time to try out the new slang he had learned earlier. “I’m always up for some afternoon delight.”Bucky watched in horror as Mona’s face morphed into shock, her eyebrows knitted together, her mouth hanging open.“You’re always up…for what?”___________________________(Okay, so I feel like this starts a bit slow, but it gets good. You know that meme with the horse, and the backside is drawn magnificently, but as you get to the head it looks like trash? This fic is that! But, like, in reverse. Just give it a chance to warm up)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Original Character(s), James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Garden Collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977871
Comments: 22
Kudos: 46





	1. Who The Hell Are You?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I don't know if I'm good at this, but quarantine has inspired me to start writing again, and after binging a bunch of Marvel movies over again I fell in love with Bucky and I just want him to be loooooved. 
> 
> Bearhooke, Idaho is a fake town, and the geography is fake, mainly because I live in NY and I don't what's it like to live out west, and I didn't want to offend anyone who lived in a real town. 
> 
> Hope you like it!

After four months here, Bucky felt like he had finally found his stride. He couldn’t claim to lead a “normal” life, of that he was sure, but it was far from what he had known for the last few decades. Those were decades he could never get back, never erase. They would always be tucked into the folds of his mind, lurking at his heels and taunting him from every shadowy corner.

Still, Bearhooke, Idaho had become a haven for his tortured soul. For anyone else, the small logging town that kissed the border between Idaho and Washington might have presented a dull existence. There were only three types of weather Bearhooke experienced: fog, rain, and snow. The few stretches of sunshine it received each year were treasured, and usually induced impromptu festivals, fairs, and block parties. Along with being home to one of the largest sawmills in the country, Bearhooke was a big college town. The University of Northern Idaho was a fifteen-minute bus ride into the city, and with a population of just under 200,000, it was a place small enough that there was nothing to do but go to sporting events and frat parties, but large enough for someone to be just another face in the crowd. It was just what Bucky needed. After a year of wandering as far west as he could, he settled in a place where he felt like he could _breathe_ again. 

Bucky adjusted his baseball cap slightly as he waited in line at his favorite deli/restaurant. It was Friday, and Cha-Chi’s had a line that just about reached the door. There was always a line, and usually, Bucky avoided lines (standing for long periods of time in one spot made him uneasy), but he made the sacrifice for their famous roast beef sandwich. Cha-Chi’s was one of the few in Bearhooke where you could get really good food. Even though the sandwiches came nowhere near Katz’s back in New York, Cha-Chi’s did hit the spot for Bucky. He remembered crossing the bridge ever so often with Steve into Manhattan just to wait an hour or two for Katz’s sandwiches, but the pillowy bread and perfectly aged meats were worth it. 

Any thought of Steve or his past life, in general, felt like an intrusive thought, and he felt his breathing falter a little. Bucky bit his lip as he approached the counter to order, the all too familiar anxious feeling setting in whenever he had to ask anyone for anything. It had gotten better, but it was definitely not something he would completely get used to. He took orders, he didn’t give them.

Thankfully, the exchange with the nice cashier went smoothly, and 10 minutes later, Bucky was on his way home with two of Cha-Chi’s best swinging at his side. He made it halfway to his building before he felt the first few cold droplets of January rain hit his face, and he picked up the pace. It was a cold enough day that he could see the puffs of air escaping his mouth as he power-walked up the stairs to the main entrance.

He bounded up the stairs two at a time (he never took the elevator, same concept as lines, only in a confined space) to the fourth-floor landing and made his way to 4-C. That wasn’t his apartment. He lived on the top floor, 5-H, but Bucky had found himself in an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Johnson, the older Haitian lady with the bad hip.

It all began one day, about three weeks after he moved in. It was pretty late, around 10 pm, and he was on his way up from working a late shift at the sawmill (it was good hard labor and they didn’t care about working papers or social security numbers). He noticed a door that was slightly ajar, and he paused for a moment, before deciding to proceed upstairs to his apartment. As much as he tried though, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should go back downstairs and investigate. He knocked on the open door twice before tentatively entering the apartment.

“Hello?” he tried, hoping he wasn’t being completely stupid by walking into someone’s home uninvited. After a moment, he decided he had already overstayed his welcome and was about to hightail it out of there when he heard a soft groan not far from the door. He fumbled for the light switch and discovered Mrs. Johnson’s limp body splayed on the floor.

Apparently, he learned at the hospital later, she had gotten overconfident with the stairs, and by the time she reached her apartment, her hip buckled and she fell. She had been lying there for hours by the time Bucky found her.

“You probably saved her life,” the young doctor told Bucky as he took care of Mrs. Johnson’s sprained wrist, as a result of her trying to break her fall.

_Saved her life._ He had to bite his lip to contain the myriad of emotions that welled up inside him when he heard those words. Blood wasn’t being spilled on his account. That wasn’t something Bucky could easily let go of, it turned out. Even after Mrs. Johnson’s daughter and son-in-law came to stay with her for a couple of weeks, even after they secured a home health aid for her, Bucky still checked in on the funny old lady, just to be sure she was still okay. He made sure to do so at least a couple of times a week. Sometimes they were quick check-ins, but sometimes she insisted he stay and sit on her plush couch while she fixed him something to eat despite his protests. She was stubborn, just a smidge less so than a certain scrawny blond he used to know, but he found himself looking forward to those long visits. She would often talk about her time in Haiti and how hard it was emigrating to the U.S., leaving behind the rolling green hills and abundance of fresh fruit she was used to. She would often apologize for going on and on about the “old days”, but Bucky certainly didn’t mind. Plus, there was the fact that he was technically 26 years older than her. 

The visits were frequent enough that she eventually had a key made for him. “Might as well, since you want to act like my boyfriend,” she quipped when she handed the key to him, which he had a good laugh at.

Now, Bucky tucked both sandwiches under his arm as he knocked on her door. He always knocked first. Her couch was close enough to the door that he could hear her shout “come in” while she watched her daytime TV shows (which she referred to as her “movies”), or Anna, her nurse would open the door on the days she was there. He only used the key when there was no response, which usually meant she was napping or Anna had taken her out on a little excursion. On those occasions, he usually left a note letting her know he had stopped by.

There was no response this time around, so he let himself in and made his way to the kitchen. He placed one of the sandwiches in the fridge and began rummaging around for a pen and a piece of paper.

“Who the hell are you?”

Bucky spun around to see a terrified looking young woman standing in the archway of the kitchen. She was dripping wet, with shampoo suds still in her black curly hair that were slowly sliding onto her smooth brown shoulder. Her one hand was desperately clutching the towel she was wrapped in, and the other was holding a furry slipper in her hand as if it were a handgun.

Bucky was just as stunned to see this stranger in his friend’s apartment, lifting both hands up as if her slipper were an actual weapon. He recalled Mrs. Johnson mentioning something about her granddaughter coming to stay with her. “She’s around your age. And she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” she had added. He had smiled at the implication but ignored it.

Bucky took the gamble and said, “You must be Mona, right?”

She took a sharp step back, the slipper still aimed at his chest. “How the hell do you know my name?”

“Sorry, I was just—I’m Buc—Steve. I’m Steve, I know your grandma,” he stammered out. Bucky winced slightly as he introduced himself with his chosen moniker. _“What’s your name, kid?”_ he remembered the burly truck driver had asked him after picking him up at the side of the road. Exhausted and still reeling from the events in D.C. a few days before, Bucky had let “Steve” tumble out of his mouth. He stuck with it as he traveled across the country, as far away from the real Steve as he could.

Mona’s shoulders fell and she put her weapon back on her left foot. “Oh, my gosh. Yes, Steve, hi,” she said with a relieved sigh. She adjusted her towel a bit. “My mom told me about you, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Mona,” she stretched a hand out to him to shake, which he did. “I seriously thought my worst nightmare had come true and an intruder had come in when I was in the shower. The hat and the gloves don’t really help, by the way.”

Bucky looked down at his leather-clad hands. He couldn’t disagree with her. “I’m sorry I startled you. I left a sandwich for your grandma,” he said, motioning toward the fridge.

“Oh that’s nice, thanks,” she said with a smile.

They were both quiet for a moment, not sure of how this interaction should continue. After a beat, Mona seemed to remember that she was only in a towel. She adjusted it tighter and laughed uncomfortably.

“Well, um. I’m gonna finish my shower, uh, and I will let Grandma know you stopped by when Anna brings her back,” she straightened her shoulders again to must up whatever dignity she could. “It was nice meeting you again, Steve.” She stuck out her hand once more and Bucky shook it once more.

“See you around,” he nodded toward her and adjusted his cap, grateful for her dismissal.

He headed upstairs and let out a long sigh when he finally opened the door to his own apartment. He threw off his gloves first. He really did hate wearing those gloves, and he hated the reason for the gloves even more. The hat and coat came off next, followed by everything else because by that time Bucky decided he needed a long hot shower himself. His tolerance for human interaction reached its limit for the day, and he could feel a mild headache coming on (those were a little too common for his liking, a by-product courtesy of HYDRA).

As he let the warm water cascade over his face and felt the air grow heavy with steam, he let himself get a little lost in hazy thoughts of walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and laughs over hot roast beef sandwiches. 


	2. Lemonade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this is moving too slow, but it'll get good, I promise lol. I don't want the chapters to be too long, sorry sorry!
> 
> Edit: I was young and naive when I started this fic. The chapters do get long.
> 
> So long...*stares into the middle distance*

It was nearing the end of Bucky’s shift at the sawmill, the sky already giving way to hues of red and orange as 5 o’clock rolled around. He worked in the loading docks, where raw lumber was transferred from the receiving trucks to the docks, where they were sorted into bundles and sent off to get processed into sheets of industrial wooden planks. When Bucky had touched down in Bearhooke, it didn’t take long for him to find this job. Here, if you didn’t go to college, you worked at the sawmill or the lumber yard that was 40 minutes away from town. If you did have a degree, you most likely worked at the University, and if you were smart, you’d find your way out of this town.

With lumber work being so lucrative and necessary here, it wasn’t surprising that Bucky’s supervisors were willing to pay him under the table. It was common practice here; as long as you were reliable and consistent, you could make an honest living. Bucky actually liked the work. It was repetitive and almost rhythmic, which quieted his mind. When he wasn’t losing sleep to disjointed dreams and nightmares, his mind was reaching for lost memories, trying to reclaim his past while coming to terms with the reality around him. Work brought some stability. His focus was on the task at hand, on the present moment that was tangible and real.

Bucky appreciated the soreness he felt as he walked back home. He took deep breaths and allowed the cold air to fill his lungs. He decided that it had been a good day. That was a habit he forced himself into, ranking days. They were either good or bad, no in-between so that there was no room for uncertainty. He usually made the decision after the day had ended and he made sure to document it in his notebook before bed. He couldn’t help but smile a little when he saw he had a few good days in a row.

When Bucky reached the fourth-floor landing, he paused. It had been a full week since he checked in with Mrs. Johnson, which he felt mildly guilty about. For some reason, the encounter he had with her granddaughter had made him hesitant to knock on her door for reasons he didn’t quite know. It wasn’t like she had been hostile, but she was definitely wary of him and he didn’t want to intrude. 

But today had been a good day, and he wanted to see how his friend was, so he pushed aside any second thoughts and knocked on her door.

“Come in, sweetheart,” he heard muffled through the door. There was something about his knock that she always immediately recognized (he usually knocked with his left hand).

Bucky opened the door and was greeted by the smell of spice and cooked meat, which made his stomach feel emptier than it had before.

“Oh, look who decides to show his face,” Mrs. Johnson says as she shuffled her way across the living room toward him. She turned her cheek, and Bucky planted a quick kiss onto it. “How are you my dear?”

“Good,” he said truthfully. “It smells good in here.”

“The food is just about done, Mona’s finishing up,” she said. She leaned in toward him and whispered, “That girl won’t let me do nothing since she got here.”

He laughed. “You shouldn’t be working too hard anyway,” he said, and she sucked her teeth and swatted him away dismissively.

“Na-Na! Come here!” she shouted as she sat down on the recliner next to the couch. “Na-Na!”

“I’m coming grandma, geez,” Mona said as she emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a dishtowel.

This time, she was fully clothed in a UNI sweatshirt and leggings, with her curls bunched up in a bun on the top of her head. When she saw Bucky, she gave him a closed-lip smile, doing her best to ignore the heat of embarrassment that was creeping up her neck, leftover from their last meeting.

“Hey, you,” she said.

“Hey,” he said, nodding towards her.

“Na-Na, this is Steve, he help me with my hip that time,” Mrs. Johnson said.

“Yeah grandma, we met, remember? I told you he stopped by last week,” she said, pointedly not making eye contact with him.

“Oh, yes, yes. There’s enough food for him?” Mrs. Johnson asked as she fiddled with the remote.

“Oh, no, that’s alright,” Bucky interjected. “I just wanted to say hi, I don’t need to…” his voice trailed off under the intense glare of the old lady. It was rare that he left this apartment without having eaten something.

Mona laughed, knowing full well how her grandma was. That’s how all Haitians were; you were gonna eat whether you liked it or not.

“There’s enough food. I hope you like pork chops and rice and beans,” Mona said with a quick glance at Bucky before ducking back into the kitchen.

“Wait, Na-Na! Na-Na!”

“Yeeeessssss,” Mona groaned, peeking her head out again.

“We have lemonade?”

“Uh, hold on,” her head disappeared and reappeared a few moments later. “Nuh-uh,” she reported.

“Can you stop by the store then, chéri,” Mrs. Johnson pouted toward her granddaughter. 

“Of course, grandma,” Mona conceded. She walked over and gave her grandma a kiss on the forehead. “Sugar free though,” which was answered by more teeth sucking.

“I’ll be back,” she said, walking past Bucky to retrieve her coat. “The food is done, so you don’t have to worry about it. “

She was just about to open the door, when Mrs. Johnson called out.

“Take Steve with you, dear.”

Mona paused and slowly turned to face her grandma, her hand still outstretched and poised to turn the knob.

“What?”

“Take Steve with you. It’s not safe.”

Mona’s eyes flicked toward Bucky then back again. “Grandma…I’m a grown woman. I’ll be fine, the store isn’t too far away.”

“Did you hear me,” the old woman said in a clipped tone.

The two women stared each other down in a silent challenge, both unwilling to be the one to back down. Bucky wanted to intervene, but he wisely decided it would be best not to.

“Grandma.”

“I know you heard me.”

“Yeah bu—“

“I’m not gonna repeat myself, girl.”

Mona let out a prolonged sigh. She faced Bucky and gave him a cautious look, as if she was deciding whether the real danger was outside or standing right in front of her.

“Come along then,” she said after a moment, opening the door and stepping into the hall.

Bucky swallowed before following her. He suddenly felt like he had gotten himself into something, but what, he was yet to know.


	3. Something New

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm Haitian-American by the way, I don't want anyone thinking I'm trying to misrepresent anyone or anything. Just writing from experience. Also, the University of Northern Idaho is a fake school, not to be mistaken with North Idaho College, which is real. 
> 
> Feedback is welcome, btw.

“Do tampons scare you?”

They were in the section labeled “feminine hygiene” at Mike’s Mini Mart. The walk over had been quiet. Usually, Bucky enjoyed the quiet, but for some reason, the silence with Mona had felt unsettling. There had been a few times he opened his mouth to say something, only to have the words die out in the back of his throat. He wasn’t sure if she was mad that he came along, and he wasn’t sure if she liked him at all. He wasn’t sure why he even cared.

The silence continued as they picked up the lemonade, but when they walked back to the front of the store to pay, Mona broke it by reminding herself out loud that her period was about to begin. They stopped by a few other aisles to pick up heating pads, ibuprofen, ice cream, and chocolate. Bucky tagged along a few paces behind Mona as she dropped various things in the shopping basket hanging off her arm. It looked like she was struggling with it a bit, and Bucky had already offered to carry it three times, but she was adamant that she could do it herself. Stubborn, like her grandmother.

Now, they were standing in front of shelves stocked with pads, tampons, and a myriad of other products that one apparently needed to get through their monthly cycle. Mona had picked up on Bucky’s consternation at the overwhelming variety which prompted her question.

“Uh, no,” he said, straightening back up and unfurrowing his brow. “I have sisters.”

 _Had sisters_. Bucky’s chest constricted at the thought, and he dug his fingernails into the flesh of his palm to dismiss it. Some things were just too much for him to ponder.

“Ah, so you’re no stranger to the red wave,” she said as she perused the shelves. “Tampons scare me, which is whyyyy,” she picked up a package and held it up, “pads are the way to go. For me at least. Less invasive.”

Bucky nodded as if this information would benefit him personally. Mona’s sudden chatter put him at ease for a moment, but it was soon replaced by the anxiety of having to keep up a conversation. _What is wrong with you,_ he chastised himself.

“Oh crap. None of these have wings,” Mona groaned. She frowned at the shelves.

“Jesus, are they gonna take off or something,” Bucky muttered quietly, the image of several sanitary napkins flapping in the wind like birds invading his mind. He thought Mona was far enough not to hear him, but she looked up at him before bursting into laughter.

“Wow, thank you, I needed that laugh,” she said, flashing a real smile at him for the first time.

Bucky couldn’t help but smile back, an irrational pride swelling in his chest that he had made her laugh.

“I’m just gonna have to settle,” she said, letting the package fall unenthusiastically into the basket.

They went up to pay, and Bucky made sure to take all the bags before Mona could, which earned him a side-eyed look from her, but she didn’t argue.

The silence returned as they began the walk home, but this time it didn’t carry any awkwardness. Mona was the first to break it again.

“I never thanked you, by the way,” she said, looking up at him. “For helping my grandma when her hip gave out. I was abroad last semester when all that happened. It was a good thing you were there, and my mom is definitely grateful too.”

“I’m glad I was there too. Your grandma is a nice lady.”

“Yeah she’s the best, but stubborn as hell. She hates letting people help her,” Mona said shaking her head.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Bucky said plainly.

Mona swatted at him. “I am perfectly capable of holding groceries by myself, you just won’t let chivalry die.” They both chuckled.

“Why were you abroad?” he asked.

“Oh, it was part of my research for my dissertation. I’m writing on 19th Century British literature, so I was in London. I’m only a second-year Ph.D. student so I still have a bit of time, but I wanna be ahead of the curve,” she said, moving her arm in a worm-like motion.

“So you go to UNI?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t my first choice, but with grandma being here, I couldn’t help it. Plus, my job at the Writing Center takes care of tuition.” She attempted to take one of the bags from Bucky’s hand, but he nudged her away. “What about you? What brings you to Bearhooke? I know you’re not from here.”

“How?”

“For one thing, you don’t have the accent, and secondly, I haven’t seen you wear one piece of clothing that supports an athletic team.”

He grinned. “You’re right.” Bucky considered his next words carefully. “I’m from out east, but I needed a change. Something new.”

Mona waited a bit to see if he would elaborate, but he said nothing more.

“Well, I hope you find your ‘something new’,” she said.

They held each other’s gaze for a moment before Mona had to look away. There was too much behind his eyes, she could tell from the moment they met. It was like his stare was too heavy, like a dam holding back stormy waters. She didn’t want to drown.

Silence descended once more as their building came into view. Bucky mused over what she said. He didn’t actually know if it was possible for him to find Something New. Even though D.C. and HYDRA, and Steve Rogers were behind him, his past wasn’t something that could just fizzle away. There was a constant struggle between his want of remembering the man he was before the metal arm, and his desperate need to move forward and piece together something resembling a real life. He glanced at Mona again and dared to think that maybe he would find a way to do both.

Maybe. 


	4. So We're Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like my Age of Ultron timeline is off, but just by a little. Also, please let me know if my formatting is off.

_He was floating just under the surface of the water. Light filtered through and danced around him. .._

_Steve was there, floating in front of him. Not the Steve that exists now, not Captain America. The old Steve, the little punk who was too stupid to walk away from a fight..._

_For a moment they were just floating there, staring at each other as pieces of the helicarriers plunged into the river around them..._

_Bucky reached out to him, his hand just about to touch his shoulder when Steve suddenly began to descend rapidly, down, down, down…_

_Bucky swam after him, fighting the water as best he could, but he felt like he was trying to swim through concrete…_

_Bucky tried to call his name, but his lungs just filled with water until they burned, his arms still reaching out to Steve..._

______________

“You okay?” Mona asked, wisps of condensation following her words. 

Bucky was silent for a moment. They were on their way back home from one of their frequent excursions to Mike’s Mini Mart. Mrs. Johnson took every opportunity to send them out, whether she didn’t have the specific drink that she wanted, or she was worried her spices would run out. 

“You know what she’s doing, right?” Mona deadpanned on a trip they went on last week to get two bananas. Only two. Apparently six wasn’t enough for banana pudding, and Mrs. Johnson was adamant about following the recipe exactly even though anyone who knows her knew her condemnation of written recipes. Bucky had shaken his head at Mona. He really just chalked it up to old lady idiosyncrasies.

“She sends us out here by ourselves in the hopes that we’ll fall in love, get married, and I’ll finally give her the great-grandchildren she so needs,” Mona said matter-of-factly. 

“Wow, that’s...sneaky,” Bucky laughed. 

“She _thinks_ she’s being sneaky. She and my mom are convinced I’m miserable because I’m single,” Mona groaned. “Granted, I’ve never had a boyfriend or anything, but I’ve survived thus far.”

Bucky’s eyebrows lifted, which didn’t escape Mona’s notice. 

“What, you’re judging me too?”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “I just...I’m surprised, is all.”

“Why?”

“You’re beautiful. And smart,” he said carefully, staring ahead. “But you’re right, that doesn’t mean you need a husband,” he added. 

Mona ignored the little flip her heart had done. “Thank you, exactly.”

Now, as they walked back home, three cans of evaporated milk in hand, Mona couldn’t ignore that her new friend (she hoped they were friends) was unusually quiet. Which was saying a lot for a man with his disposition. 

“I’m okay,” he replied to her inquiry. 

That was a lie, though. The dream he had the night before had rattled him. He had woken up in a cold sweat, still grasping for Steve. He couldn’t shake the feeling of helplessness or anguish he felt. It didn’t help that it was his day off, so he couldn’t even clear his mind at work. Cha-Chi’s hadn’t helped either. 

Mona squinted at him. “I don’t believe you, but I’m not gonna push it.” 

By this time, she already knew he was a veteran, and that he’d lost his arm (hence the gloves he chose to wear all the time). She didn’t know much about war or PTSD, or what he could have possibly done over there (in Afghanistan, according to her knowledge), but she didn’t want to pry. It was hard for her though. Something about him made her want to know more, to know what made his eyes so stormy. But he was a leaky faucet, only giving one droplet of information at a time.

The corner of Bucky’s mouth tilted upward slightly. “Thanks.”

Mona hesitated before saying, “Well, there’s this thing I was invited to tonight.” He glanced at her. “It’s this stupid thing that the English Grad Club puts on during midterms. We just get together and gripe over classes, drink wine, eat pizza.” She checked his face for a reaction before continuing. “It’s supposed to blow off steam, blah, blah, blah. Do you...wanna come with me? To get your mind off of whatever’s not bothering you…”

The last thing Bucky wanted to do was to be around people. Even the thought threatened a headache, but he also didn’t want to disappoint Mona. The latter outweighed the former, and he conceded. 

“Great!” The enthusiasm in her tone told him this would be worth it. “Okay, so meet me back downstairs in 20 minutes,” she said as they entered the building. “I don’t want Grandma knowing we’re going somewhere together. She’ll chloroform me and I’ll wake up in a wedding dress warehouse somewhere.”

He cracked a wide smile for that. 

___________

Bucky had never actually been to the university before, only heard about it and read about it in the paper. As Mona pulled into the main gate, he was surprised by how many trees were on campus, white stone buildings peeking out between them that looked almost cathedral-like. Mona parked and they followed the main path to the largest building that had ELTON HALL displayed over its entrance. 

“This is the Writing Center,” Mona said over her shoulder as he followed her through a set of glass doors inside. It was a long room, lined with bookshelves and clusters of wooden tables and green couches. To the left, the room broke off into what looked like offices. It was deserted, just like the grounds outside, save the group in the far back. He could smell the pizza from the moment they walked in.

“Hey everyone, sorry we’re late,” Mona said as they approached, which was followed by a chorus of hellos. It was a small group. There were no more than five other people there besides himself and Mona, but the number of pizza boxes he noticed seemed gratuitous, as if more people were expected to have come. 

“You came, I was sure you were gonna flake,” the blonde lady directed at Mona. “And you brought a friend,” she said eyeing Bucky. 

“Are you kidding, I wouldn’t want to miss this absolute rager,” Mona responded, which prompted laughter from the rest of them. “Guys, this is Steve, Steve this Nicole, Lacey, Johnny, Rick, and Luna,” she said, gesturing to each. Bucky nodded in salutation at them. 

“Welcome to English Grad Club,” Johnny said. “Good to have ya onboard Steve.”

“We finally get to meet the boyfriend, he’s cute,” Luna smirked. 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Mona said a bit too defensively as she sat down on one of the couches and motioned for Bucky to do the same. 

“In that case, how you doin’ for real, Steve,” Luna said, suggestively biting her lip. 

“Don’t be a whore in front of my friend,” Mona responded, throwing a couch pillow at her. 

“I’ll behave, my bad,” Luna said, her hands raised in surrender. 

The conversation quickly devolved into department gossip and grueling assignments, like Mona had said it would. Bucky just observed while he enjoyed the free pizza (pizza tasted at least 60% better when it was free). He let himself muse about what life would have been like for him if there had been no war, no draft. Would he and Steve have gone to college? He imagined the Steve he had known struggling under the weight of his textbooks as he walked across campus. The thought almost made him smile, but it felt foreign and impossible, a dream with no chance of reality. 

“I’m just saying if the Avengers don’t take responsibility for what happened in Sokovia, then where does the fault lie?”

Bucky drew himself back into the conversation at the mention of the Avengers. Bucky had done his fair share of research about the Avengers at the library across town. He knew about New York and the plenty of other life-saving ventures they’ve been on. After all these years, Steve was still running into a fight head first, most recently with an army of killer robots. 

“I mean, have you guys seen the footage?” Johnny continued. 

“Ugh, Jonathan, no one wants to hear this again,” Luna groaned. 

“The fate of the world doesn’t concern you, nice,” he replied sarcastically. 

“I don’t think they’ve skirted responsibility, they put out a statement last week,” Nicole countered before taking a bite of pizza. 

“Stark Industries put out a statement,” Johnny said, leaning forward. “Don’t you find that weird? Besides, all it basically said was ‘we’re sorry stuff got blown up and people died, blaaah’.”

“Here we go,” Rick said, chugging the rest of his beer down. 

“They saved the world, dipshit,” Luna said. 

“Yeah, from a threat that Stark created in the first place,” Johnny said. “Think about it. New York was supposedly caused by Loki, Thor’s brother. Thor, who so happens to be an Avenger. After that whole fiasco, Stark Industries shares went up by 200%. This time, Ultron was created by Stark himself, and the analysts say his company is only going to gain even more revenue.”

“Johnny, for the last time, there’s no way the Avengers purposefully create these problems. You honestly believe Tony Stark is doing this just for money?” Nicole asked. 

“The guy’s a billionaire, what doesn’t he do for money?” Johnny wet his lips. “Why not let the government and military take care of this shit?”

“The military’s solution to New York was literally a nuke that would have killed 8 million-plus people,” Rick snorted.

“Still, the point is, the Avengers are funded by Stark Industries, that happens to increase in value every time they go on one of their...vigilante power trips. Why do you think we even know who these people are, why not save the world in anonymity if they're such saints? Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce freaking Banner? It’s because they're relying on the support of lackeys like you guys. Without public support, their act won’t work,” Johnny said. 

At the mention of Steve’s name, Bucky’s blood began to boil. This guy had no clue what he was talking about, and Bucky was tempted to show him where he could shove it. 

“There’s even some evidence that suggests Steve Rogers may not even be the original Steve Rogers,” Johnny said, making quotation marks in the air. “And there’s a whole museum dedicated to that guy, and guess who has a stake in it? Stark Industries,” he continued, dropping a fake microphone. 

Bucky opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Mona interjected. 

“Do you even hear yourself? It’s because of people like you that we can’t have nice things,” she said. “Steve Rogers is a super-soldier with enhanced abilities, of course he survived the ice. He’s an American hero, for goodness sake. Look what he did in D.C. last year. As for Tony Stark, yeah he’s a billionaire with more money than he needs, but he funds more schools and public programs than the government ever will. He was the one who went through the fucking wormhole. If New York, D.C., and Sokovia proved anything, it’s that there’s some seriously crazy shit out there, and the people who take that head-on have more courage, honor, and valor than you could ever have or imagine” She took a sip of soda.

There was silence. 

“Ohhh, I think they felt that burn all the way on Asgard,” Luna said finally, which was met with laughter. 

Johnny shrugged. “Okay, I’ll drop it, but you guys will see.”

“Thank goodness. Now can we please talk about that paper for Theory class we have to do?” Nicole pleaded. 

The conversation traveled back to calmer waters, and Bucky was thankful, but he was especially thankful for what Mona said. He was glad he wasn’t the only willing to come to Steve’s defense. 

Eventually, everyone mentioned reasons they had to leave, and the “party” ended. When they got home, Mona offered to walk Bucky back to his apartment. 

“Shouldn’t I be the one walking you to…” he began, but knew better than to finish that sentence. It was the 21st Century, after all, times were changing. Plus, Mona’s glare was just as scary as her grandmother’s. 

They reached the fifth floor, and Bucky opened his door and flipped on the light. 

“Nice place you have there,” Mona said peeking over his shoulder. 

“It’s not much, but it does the trick,” Bucky shrugged. She rolled her eyes.

“Well, thanks for coming with me tonight. I figured you needed more friends than just me and that crazy old lady,” she said, and they both laughed. 

“So... we’re friends,” Bucky said as more of a statement than a question. 

“Yeah, we are,” Mona confirmed, a slow smile forming on her face. 

They stared at each other in silence for a beat longer than was socially acceptable before Mona turned to go. 

“Goodnight Steve,” she said before turning around toward the stairs. 

“Bucky.”

She turned. “What?”

“Call me Bucky. It’s a nickname, my middle name is Buchanan,” he said, feeling a slight rush. It was the first completely true, unabridged thing he said to her. 

She paused and considered for a moment. “Okay. Goodnight Bucky,” she said with a quick wave before heading down the stairs. She didn’t want him to see the absolutely goofy and ridiculous smile that was plastered on her face.

They both went to bed that night, but it was a while before either of them could close their eyes without seeing the other behind their eyelids. 


	5. Afternoon Delight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thiiiink this is a funny chapter? it's definitely fluffy tho

Part of Bucky told him that this was a bad idea, but he pushed ahead anyway, telling himself it was important to make gestures of appreciation.

_“It’s always important to say thank you, it lets people know you see them,” his mother said, smoothing down his hair. She bent down to be eye-level with him. She frowned slightly and adjusted his collar._

_“Now what are you going to do James?”_

_“Give Miss Sarah the flowers, and thank her,” Bucky recited. He didn’t mind this task, Steve’s mom was one of his favorites._

_She straightened and gave his head one last pat._

_“Good boy.”_

It was that recollection that prompted his trip to the University now, a bundle of roses in one hand and one of Cha-Chi’s finest roast beef sandwiches in the other. The bus had gotten him there just after noon, and he was hoping that Mona hadn’t had lunch yet, or else he’d feel ridiculous. He wanted to thank her for including him the other night and return the favor in some way, or at least that’s what he kept telling himself. The sandwich was because she had told him she never had one of Cha-Chi’s before, which he found unacceptable, and the flowers were just a supplement because that’s just what you do, give women flowers. Bucky was convinced that women still enjoyed getting flowers, even if it wasn’t the 1940’s anymore.

He made his way across campus to Eton Hall, and walked up to the front desk when he reached the Writing Center. There were two students sitting behind it, a boy and a girl, both wearing blue tags that said: **Hi! I work here, ask me anything!**

“Hi, do you have a student ID so I can check you in?” the girl asked cheerfully.

“Uh no, I don’t go here. I’m looking for Mona,” Bucky said.

“Our Assistant Director?” she asked, eyeing the flowers. Bucky nodded.

“She’s probably in her office, I’ll go check if she’s available,” she said with a customer service smile before heading off.

Bucky took a deep breath and convinced himself once more that this was a good idea.

“Those are pretty,” the other desk attendant said. “They’re for Mona?”

Bucky looked down at the roses. “Yeah, they are.”

“Oh, nice,” he said. He looked over at the clock that was on the wall above the doors. 30 more minutes and he would be off of desk duty. He glanced at the table full of his fellow writing tutors that was nearby, anticipating when he could unleash the gossip about the man that bought their boss flowers.

“Steve?”

He turned in time to see Luna walk through the glass doors. She flashed her ID at the desk attendant before smiling at Bucky.

“Long time no see. What brings you here?” She asked playfully, raising an eyebrow. She toyed with one of the flowers.

“I brought Mona some lunch,” he said, displaying the Cha-Chi’s bag.

Luna smirked. “Huh. Came to give her some afternoon delight?”

Bucky’s eyebrows furrowed. That seemed like an unusual way to refer to lunch, but he assumed it was a 21st Century thing he wasn’t familiar with yet.

“You could say that, yeah.”

Just then, the desk attendant began to cough violently, and they both turned to him.

“I’m okay--choked on spit,” he croaked out, unscrewing his water bottle. _Damn, 30 minutes could not go by any slower_ , he thought to himself as he took a sip.

“Luna, I hope you’re not bothering this poor man,” Mona said as she walked up, the other desk attendant in tow.

It was then that Bucky realized he had never really seen Mona in anything other than baggy sweatshirts and sneakers. She was wearing a black, long sleeved turtleneck tucked into a plaid pencil skirt that stopped just passed her knees, both of which hugged her body in a way that allowed Bucky’s eyes to trace her curves. The black pumps she was wearing only accentuated her stocking-less legs.

_This was a bad idea_ , Bucky thought, suddenly aware of his own breathing.

“I’m not bothering him,” Luna said innocently. “Enjoy your lunch break, Mon,” she said with a wink before sauntering off.

Mona rolled her eyes despite the grin on her face. She looked at Bucky and her smile widened.

“Hi there.”

“Hey.”

A pause.

“Those are for me?” Mona asked, nodding at the flowers.

“Uh, yes,” Bucky said, handing them over.

Mona bit her tongue to contain the smile on her face. “They’re roses. I love roses.”

“Yeah, I remembered you got excited when Mike’s had them a couple of weeks ago,” he said. It had been Valentine’s Day when they were on one of their Grandma-mandated trips, and she had practically squealed when she saw them.

“But you got these at Lillian’s Floral Emporium,” she said, touching the complimentary lily that came with every bundle.

“Yeah.” He ran a gloved hand through his hair.

She made eye contact with him. “I didn’t think that would be something you would remember.”

_Abort, abort, abort, get the hell out of here Barnes, she’s onto us,_ the alarms blared in his head.

He took a sharp breath. “Well, I just wanted to say thank you, for inviting me out the other day. And I got you a sandwich, because you said you hate the salad here,” he fumbled, handing it over.

“Oh they’re awful. And soggy,” the male desk attendant interjected. The girl pinched his leg.

“I’ll see you later,” Bucky said, turning to go.

“Wait!” Mona said. He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Um, I know for a fact I won’t be able to finish this whole thing by myself,” she lied. She knew full well she could scarf down the entire thing, but she wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. “Do you want to stay? Eat the other half?”

He grinned. “Why not.”

“Awesome, we can eat in my office,” she said. “Sydney, do we still have those random vases that catering left here, from that awards night thingy they had a while ago?”

The girl jerked a little, realizing she had been watching this whole scene way too intently.

“Yes, in the break room, I can take those,” she said reaching for the flowers.

“Nice,” Mona said. “And put them on the table, so everyone can enjoy them,” she gestured to the table filled with the other tutors, who by now were sneaking glances at what had been unfolding. “Follow me,” she directed at Bucky.

Bucky trailed slightly behind her, keeping his eyes trained respectfully on her ponytail so that they wouldn’t travel down her back and onto more indecent territory. They reached her office, and she took his coat to hang on the hook by the door (she tried her best to ignore how the blue Henley he was wearing underneath accented his eyes, or how she could see his muscles under the fabric). It wasn’t a large office, but it wasn’t a cubicle either. There was enough room for a tall bookcase along the left wall. On the opposite wall were a variety of posters and a large calendar. She cleared off some of the books and folders on her desk so they would have room. She sat down behind her desk and he sat in the chair in front of it.

Mona noticed when Bucky took his gloves off, revealing his prosthetic hand. He didn’t take them off often, even in her grandmother’s apartment, and she felt a little happier than she should have that he was comfortable enough to take them off in front of her. They chatted about miscellaneous things like the traffic Bucky encountered on his way over, and the annoying faculty meeting Mona endured earlier. 

“Mmmm, this is so much better than a salad,” Mona said as they ate. “You’re right, I really was missing out. Roast beef isn’t that bad.”

“I told you,” he said between bites.

“Oh hang on, you have a little something,” she said. She reached over and placed her thumb on the corner of his mouth. She gently scooped up the stray sauce, letting her thumb linger on his lower lip for a half-second longer than necessary. She drew back and licked the sauce off her thumb.

The air shifted between them after that brief skin-to-skin contact. They stared at each other, Bucky frozen mid-chew and Mona with her thumb still pressed to her lips, the room suddenly charged with an energy they both recognized. Bucky tucked in the part of his lip she had touched, as if he could somehow taste her if he did so. Mona felt the tips of her fingers spark, a deep urge to run her hand through his hair casting itself over her. 

A knock at the door interrupted the moment, and Mona let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

“Come in,” she said.

“Hi, sorry,” Sydney’s head poked in.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, sorry, it’s just that we found a small cylinder thing, and we thought you would want one of the roses for your office,” Sydney said, stepping inside and placing the rose and makeshift vase on Mona’s desk. She smiled over at Bucky.

“Ah, thanks so much, that was nice of you guys,” Mona said moving it farther from the edge of the desk.

“You’re welcome,” Sydney said, quickly taking mental notes to report back to the others before closing the door after herself.

They both looked at the rose, still recovering from the previous moment. Finally, Bucky popped the last bite of sandwich in his mouth before standing.

“Well, I think I’m off,” he said.

She stood and handed him his coat. “Okay. Thanks again for this, it was nice. We should do it more often,” she said, trying her best to sound like her normal, nonchalant self.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” Bucky grinned. He chose this time to try out the new slang he had learned earlier. “I’m always up for some afternoon delight.”

Bucky watched in horror as Mona’s face morphed into shock, her eyebrows knitted together, her mouth hanging open.

“You’re always up…for _what_?”

Bucky felt heat sear his neck as he flushed red. “Wh-I-Luna. Luna called it that,” he managed to stutter out.

Mona laughed, at once relieved and disappointed. “Don’t ever listen to anything that comes out of Luna’s mouth, please. You don’t know what that means?”

Bucky ran his hand through his hair. “Apparently not.”

“It’s for the best,” Mona said (on their following trip to Mike’s, Mona finally explained the term, which made Bucky go red all over again).

They walked back to the front desk together, Mona fully aware of the eyes of her tutors watching them.

“I’ll see you at home then,” Bucky said.

Before she could stop herself, Mona stepped forward and gave Bucky a hug, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“See you, Bucky,” she muttered before letting go.

He smiled, and her heart did a triple axel, which she resented. _Don’t give that old lady the satisfaction, Mona, you can fight this,_ she told herself.

She watched his retreating back leave through the glass doors before turning to face her staff. Every last one of them had a shit-eating grin on their face. She just rolled her eyes at them and reminded them about the freshman tour they had scheduled at 3. She could only imagine what was going to be said in the group chat they all had.

_____________

_Bucky was in a room, pitch black, he couldn’t see his hands…_

_A latch opened somewhere on the wall, spilling light into his eyes…_

_He went up to the narrow slot and looked through…_

_He saw two Russian men standing in front of another man who was bound in a chair, a sack over his head…_

_One of the Russians motioned to someone, and he saw himself step forward_

_Not himself_

_The Soldier, the Asset…_

_One of the Russians took the sack off of the bound man’s head…_

_Steve…_

_He watched as the Soldier raised his arm, gun in hand, pointed at Steve’s head…_

_Bucky tried calling out, but no one heard him, he banged on the wall_

_Bang_

_Bang_

_Bang…_

_The Soldier put his finger on the trigger…_

Bucky jolted awake, his heart racing. He tried to take deep breaths, reminding himself that it wasn’t real, he wasn’t there. Bucky realized that he still heard banging, his brain sluggishly registering that someone was actually knocking on his door incessantly. He stumbled toward it.

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Mona! It’s Mona!”

He opened the door and saw her standing there, still in her pajamas and breathing hard. She looked terrified.

“Bucky, it’s grandma, I called 911, but I don’t know what else to do.”


	6. Stay

_One, two, three, flicker, off. One, two, three, flicker, off._

Mona watched as one of the square fluorescent lights in the waiting room kept flickering. Its rod-shaped bulb kept turning off for three seconds before flickering on again and starting the whole process over. It was almost as if it were fighting to stay on, straining itself for those few seconds of life. She wondered how many people were fighting for their lives in this hospital right now. She was tapping her foot rapidly and picking at one of her nails. She hated hospitals, and she hated the fact that her grandmother was here.

“Hey,” Bucky said softly beside her.

She looked down at her hands.

“Everything is going to be okay,” he said gently.

Her grandmother had woken up and couldn’t breathe. Mona was well aware of her grandmother’s asthma, but it was hard for her not to panic. She called the ambulance immediately, and called Anna too, who met them at the hospital. Once the paramedics arrived and put her grandma on the stretcher, she realized she couldn’t go to the hospital alone, and without really thinking, she went straight to Bucky.

Now, as they sat waiting for news, she felt herself deflating, teetering on the edge of breaking down. Her vision blurred and she felt a tear fall on her hand. Bucky placed his hand on her back and began tracing slow circles between her shoulder blades. He could only sympathize with her at that moment. He remembered when Steve used to get sick, how he would lay on the floor next to his bed, counting his friend’s shuddering breaths during the night, hoping and praying after each one for the next. He remembered the way he used to try to take shallow breaths himself as if doing so would save enough air in the room for Steve. Bucky knew how helpless she was feeling all too well.

“I’m sorry,” Mona sniffed. She wiped her cheeks and chuckled weakly. “I’m kind of a mess right now.”

“I think this situation calls for a little mess,” he said.

She looked up and gave him a small grin. “I’m sorry I dragged you along, I just really hate hospitals, and I’m never really good with these kinds of things.” She sniffed again.

“You don’t have to apologize, Mona.”

She still felt the need to explain as her embarrassment began to set in. She realized how ridiculous it was to have bothered Bucky when Anna was there making sure the doctors knew everything they should.

“I almost drowned when I was younger,” she said. “I was ten, or eleven. We were on vacation, me, Mom, and Darrel. I think you met him.”

Bucky nodded in confirmation, having met her stepfather those few months back.

She sighed. “I snuck out to the pool by myself, I was lucky someone had found me. What I remember is hazy, but…I’ll never forget how I felt. I didn’t know what was going on when we got to the hospital. It kind of felt like I was still underwater, with no control, no way out.” Her eyes filled up again, and Bucky made his circles wider.

“The doctors talked over me, not to me, and when they did, they only asked questions I wasn’t sure how to answer. I know they were doing their jobs but I just hated the whole thing, you know?”

And he did know. He knew exactly what it was like to be a prisoner in his own body with no way out. Mona noticed the change in his expression. She saw it sometimes, when he would withdraw into himself, the waves behind his eyes growing taller and crashing harder. Before she could say anything, Anna walked back into the waiting room, and the storm ceased as Bucky returned to the present, his focus back on Mona and her grandmother.

“Oh, _mija_ , you look terrible,” Anna said affectionately as she wrapped Mona in a hug. She cradled her chin in her hand. “She’s doing fine. They gave her meds and have her on oxygen, but they didn’t need to intubate her, which is good. It could have been worse.”

“Can we see her?” Mona asked.

“Yes, that’s why I came out, to get you,” Anna said. She leaned in close to them and spoke through her teeth, “I lied and said y’all were engaged so Mr. Beefcake over here could come too. They only let family in during these hours.” She winked over at Bucky, and they all laughed.

They headed back to where Mrs. Johnson was being held. She somehow looked smaller in the hospital bed, but she was sitting up, and her eyes lit up when she saw them approach. She tried to take off the oxygen mask, but Mona was quick to stop her.

“Grandma, keep it on,” she said, adjusting the straps. She planted a kiss on her forehead. “How do you feel?”

The old lady nodded to indicate she was feeling alright. They all stayed with her for a while, Anna doing most of the talking about her son and his new wife (who was apparently a gold-digger). The doctor checked back in at one point and said that Mrs. Johnson was holding steady and that there was no need to worry, but they wanted to keep her overnight.

“Why don’t the two of you go home, yes? I’ll stay with her tonight,” Anna offered.

Mona hesitated, but Mrs. Johnson touched her arm and motioned toward the hallway.

“But grandma—“

Her gestures intensified. It was clear she agreed with Anna and she wouldn’t take no for an answer, that much hadn’t changed despite the circumstances.

Mona reluctantly conceded. “Okay, we’ll go home. I’ll be back first thing in the morning though,” she said, bending down to give her grandmother one last forehead kiss. “I love you grandma.”

Mrs. Johnson tenderly patted her granddaughter’s cheek. Bucky walked to the side of her bed and kneeled down to her level. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“You’re gonna listen to the doctors, right?” He said, trying his best to sound stern.

She rolled her eyes and swatted him away, and Bucky laughed before squeezing her hand. Mrs. Johnson motioned toward her granddaughter and back to him. It took Bucky a moment to understand what she meant.

“I’ll make sure she’s okay,” he assured her.

The two of them made the silent trip home. Mona had let Bucky drive after his insistence, with little protest against his chivalry. She was too tired to rage against the patriarchy.

“Thank you again for coming with me,” Mona said when they reached her door. She turned the key and opened it, switching on the light.

Bucky frowned slightly. “Are you okay?”

Mona sighed and put on a brave smile. “Yeah, I am. I just need to sleep.” As if on cue, she yawned.

“I’ll go with you tomorrow, I can call out of work,” Bucky said.

Mona’s first instinct was to say he didn’t need to, but she would have been lying to herself if she denied that she wanted him there. She appreciated his calm and quiet presence. She felt secure when he was around, like she didn’t have to put up a strong front or act like nothing could phase her. She enjoyed that feeling, but it also freaked her out how Bucky managed to disarm her like that without really trying.

“Thank you,” she said again. “I’ll see you in the morning then. I think visiting hours start at eight, if that’s alright.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Get some rest.”

He headed upstairs with the feeling that he could have done more for Mona, but he didn’t know what. She was so independent and determined, it was hard to see what he could do that she couldn’t do for herself. Still, he wanted to take care of her, to make sure she knew she didn’t have to do everything alone. Trying not to feel defeated, Bucky took a warm shower and let the steam fill his bathroom. He was just about to settle into bed when he heard a timid knock on his door.

“It’s Mona,” he heard from the other side.

He opened the door. She was in a new set of pajamas with her laptop in hand.

“I couldn’t fall asleep,” she admitted sheepishly.

Bucky stepped aside to let her in.

“I don’t sleep too well either,” Bucky reassured her.

Mona looked around for a moment. This was the first time she was ever fully in Bucky’s apartment. It was a studio, unlike her grandmother’s, and she couldn’t help but feel like it was the kind of apartment that fit Bucky perfectly. She took in the linoleum floors, the small kitchen island, and the loveseat that rested against it. There was a square metal table with a single chair, and a plain white refrigerator. Then there was the bed, and the single nightstand next to it, light from the streetlamp outside spilling onto both from the window directly above them. It felt solitary but inviting, like it was waiting for another person to wander inside and call it home. She turned to face Bucky. 

“Do you watch _Grey’s Anatomy_? ‘Cause I’ve been wanting to binge it from season one again for the longest time, and now seems like a good time to start,” she said, holding up the laptop.

Bucky didn’t quite know what it meant to binge a show, but he figured he would soon find out.

“What are we waiting for?” He said with a smile.

She smiled back, really smiled, for the first time that night, and Bucky had the passing thought that there were very few things he wouldn’t do to keep that smile on her face. She hopped on Bucky’s bed and launched Netflix. He settled in beside her, his back propped against the wall and watched as she selected the first episode. A blonde woman popped up on screen who looked like she had just woken up, and she reached down to pull a purple blanket off of a sleeping man on the floor who seemed to be naked. Mona shimmied backward until she was shoulder-to-shoulder with Bucky.

“You’re gonna like this show,” she told him confidently, and he believed her. 

Bucky realized that she was sitting on his left side, and he wondered if the metal arm bothered her. Just as he was becoming self-conscious about it, Mona let her own arm settle against it, and he even swore she scooted closer to him as if she hardly noticed the hard metal appendage attached to him. His heart did a little jig, which he ignored as he turned his attention back to the laptop. It was apparent that the two people on screen had had sex the night before, and Bucky became all too aware that this was the first time in seven decades that he had a woman in his bed. He cleared his throat to release some of the discomfort that began to gather in his chest.

He rolled his eyes at himself. _Get it together, Barnes_.

Three episodes in, and they both began to fade into sleep, the stress of the night catching up to them. Eventually, they both folded into one another and succumbed to slumber, the soft glow of the laptop lulling them under.

For the first time, Bucky had a dreamless night.

________________

“I never realized how uncomfortable that couch is,” Mona said, arching her back a bit in discomfort.

She and Bucky were in her office for lunch again. This time, Bucky had also gotten snacks for the break room, much to the delight of Mona’s tutors (she would later hear a chorus of ‘Marry him’s from her staff as they stuffed their faces with cookies and chips). They had split another sandwich from Cha-Chi’s, and Mona had snagged a couple of ice cream cups from the cafeteria.

It had been a week since Mrs. Johnson had gotten out of the hospital, and Mona was getting used to new living arrangements. Even though her grandmother was doing pretty well, it was decided that it would be best for Anna to stay around the clock for a while just to make sure. Anna had said she would take the couch, but Mona wouldn’t allow it, so Anna was sleeping in her room, and Mona was enduring the lumpy cushions for now.

_You can stay with me_. The thought invaded Bucky’s mind and lingered at the back of his throat like it had been every night that week. The morning after their _Grey’s Anatomy_ marathon, Bucky had woken up first to find Mona slumped against his chest, the laptop still open on the bed in front of them. He shifted carefully and examined her face, her smooth brown skin, the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips. She was snoring softly, which had made him smile. He gently placed his fingers in her hair and let the bend of each coil tickle his fingertips. Something had felt different that morning for him, and it wasn’t until they had reached the hospital that he realized he had slept a sound sleep in what felt like ages. He had no doubt that it was because of Mona, but it wasn’t something he dwelled on. It was dangerous; it meant that he was getting attached, that he was becoming undone, and that was unacceptable. _She doesn’t know who you are, what you’ve done_ , he kept reminding himself. Mona couldn’t be an option, not in the way he knew wanted deep down. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to shy away from her. There was a part of him that wanted to get closer to her, the selfish part of him, the human part of him that had been suppressed for so long.

“Sorry to hear that,” he said instead.

“Are you now,” she smirked. “You have that nice comfortable bed all to yourself up there, you have no sympathy for me, Mr. Beefcake.”

“You think my bed is comfortable?” It was his turn to smirk.

“I haven’t spent much time in it, but I would say so, yes,” she admitted, averting her eyes from his. She took one last spoonful of ice cream. “Speaking of which, are we on for _Grey’s_ tonight?” she asked.

It had become part of their nightly routine for the past week. Mona would come up to his apartment in her PJs and they would watch a couple of episodes in bed before she went back down again. They were in the middle of season two, and Bucky found himself entirely too engrossed in the lives of fictional characters.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

“Good,” she said, and the look she gave him made him miss a breath.

________________

“You’re late,” he said later when he opened the door for her. She laughed.

“Calm down, Seattle Grace isn’t going anywhere,” she said, rolling her eyes.

She sat on his bed, in what was becoming her usual spot, and got the computer ready. He watched her for a moment before she looked up at him.

“Well, come on then,” she said, and he joined her.

She was wearing a button-down pajama set that was navy blue and bespeckled with stars. She took the rubber band off her wrist and gathered up her hair, the hem of her shirt lifting up and revealing her lower back. Bucky let his eyes linger there for a moment before turning his attention to the screen. Meredith had gotten herself into another awkward one-night stand, and the poor fool had shown up to the hospital with an excruciating case of priapism. Bucky shuddered at the thought of going through that. The time flew by, and before he knew it, they had already gotten through three episodes. He was convinced that this Netflix technology somehow altered spacetime. 

“Alright, that’s enough for tonight,” Mona said. She yawned.

“One more, it’s not even that late,” Bucky protested.

“It’s almost midnight, and I have a nine a.m. class, and you have work,” she said. She let out a long sigh. “Off to that damn couch I go. Goodnight, Bucky.” She stood and gathered up her laptop.

“Sleep here.”

They both froze. Bucky cursed himself, he hadn’t meant for that to slip out, but after silently pleading for the past week, his want had finally bubbled over.

She looked at him.

“What?”

“You can stay here,” Bucky said slowly. He ran a hand through his hair. “To sleep.”

“Where would you sleep?” she asked, glancing at the loveseat. It was way too small for a man his size to sleep comfortably, and she wasn’t sure his couch would be a trade-up from her grandmother’s. She looked back at Bucky, and he looked down, heat rising on his neck. It dawned on her then.

“You mean…sleep here with you. In your bed. With you.”

Bucky cringed. “You know what, forget it, I didn’t mean to imply--” he took a sharp breath and looked at her. “It’s just that, when you were here, that time…I didn’t have any weird dreams or nightmares…” he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words.

Mona pressed her lips together to quell the feelings stirring in her chest. She was silent, and Bucky wished there was another speeding train nearby to fall from. Willingly this time.

“Well,” she said finally. “It seems you’ve found a simple solution to both our problems. I would have a nice bed to sleep in, and you would get a good night’s rest,” she said, a slow grin forming on her lips.

“That sounds like a heck of a deal to me,” he said, returning her grin.

She placed a hand on her hip. “It wouldn’t hurt to try out this arrangement, on a trial basis, of course.”

“Of course.”

“We’ll try it out for seven days, and if it’s successful, then we’ll continue negotiations,” she said playfully. “Do we have a deal?” She reached out a hand for him to shake.

He had a full-on smile on his face as he took it.

“Yes ma’am, I dare say we do.”

Mona gave a satisfactory nod and placed her laptop on the nightstand. She sat back down on the bed. For a moment, they both didn’t know how to proceed with this new part of their routine. They glanced at each other and laughed nervously. Mona decided to take the lead, pulling back the covers and slipping under them, and Bucky followed suit. She lied on her side with her back facing him, and he lied down beside her so that they were almost spooning. He tucked his metal arm under his head, and he almost placed his other arm around her, but he second-guessed himself, his arm hovering awkwardly in his indecision. Mona reached back and decided for him, gently grabbing his wrist and tucking his arm against her chest.

They didn’t say anything, only acknowledged each other’s breathing and took in each other’s warmth. They felt safe. This wasn’t about desire or sex or anything else. They both just felt safe, a feeling they didn’t want to take for granted, a feeling they relished and didn’t want to let go of.

They were safe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, yes I did make Bucky a Grey's Anatomy fan. Mwahahahaha.


	7. What They Didn't See

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is long and largely from Mona's perspective, but I hope you like it! I love Mona, hopefully you do too!

The sun had already started to peak its way into the apartment when Mona opened her eyes. She was used to waking up before her alarm, before him, welcoming the day with the birds outside. She lied there for a moment, her head against his chest, feeling it rise and fall with each sleeping breath. His shirt still had that fresh laundry smell. She carefully looked up at him and just stared. She always did that in the morning, looked at his face (which made her feel like a creep, but she couldn’t help it). She took it in like she was studying for a test that was half her grade.

He was beautiful.

It turned out that their arrangement worked pretty well. Despite the fact that Anna was no longer occupying her room (it had been a few weeks, in fact), that hadn’t stopped Mona from sneaking up to apartment 5-H every night. She craved their time together, so much so that she could hardly get through her days without counting down the minutes. She hated this feeling, she felt like she was losing her grip on herself, but she continued to chase after it against her better judgment. The only two things they ever did in his bed were sleep and watch Netflix, but she was still becoming lost in him.

She sighed and took one last look at him before slowly attempting to get up. Most mornings she could successfully leave without waking him, but she felt his body tense up when she moved. He groaned sleepily, and she melted around the edges a bit.

“Sorry,” she whispered apologetically.

He groaned again and turned his head toward her without opening his eyes. He slid his hand up her back and into her hair, letting his fingers dance lazily through her curls. She leaned into his touch which sent electricity down her spine. It was these little intimate moments she hated the most, because she loved them so much.

“You’re working late tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah, I won’t be home until ten,” he said, his voice deep with sleep.

“I’m sorry I woke you up, try to go back to sleep,” she said.

He finally opened his eyes and blinked a few times. “No, it’s okay, I shouldn’t sleep too much now, or else I won’t be able to later.”

“I thought that’s what I was here for,” she smiled.

He closed his eyes again and chuckled. His fingers wandered farther into her hair.

“I have to go,” she said, and he groaned in protest. “I have to, I have that presentation today, or else I wouldn’t care.” She was tempted to place a kiss on his forehead, but as close as they had gotten during the past few weeks, that still felt like a step too far.

It took almost everything in her to step out of that apartment.

Mona meandered the long way across campus despite the cold. She took the lid off of the coffee she picked up at the cafeteria to help it cool down (apparently, the coffee pot temperature was always set to Lava). She had class in the morning, but she was going to check-in with the tutors later on. She smiled to herself, knowing her tutors would ask her if Bucky was going to come around. He didn’t come around every week, but when he did, she couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t the only one who was happy about it. The last time he came, she had gotten out of a meeting to find him sitting with them, laughing at something that was now an inside joke she wasn’t privy to. She felt her heart bloom like it always did when she thought of him, and she chastised herself.

_How did you let this happen?_ she thought. When she had agreed to stay with Bucky that first night, she knew she had made a mistake. She knew that she would wind up feeling the way she did now, but she did it anyway. _You’re better off alone, you’re happier that way_ , she reminded herself as she stepped into the classroom and sat down in her usual seat. No one else was there yet, and she took the opportunity to hit her head against her desk a few times, as if that would shake Bucky out of her head.

She had never been in a relationship because she wanted to avoid this feeling. She had watched her parents’ marriage deteriorate at a young age, saw the way it had devastated her mother, and decided that she wouldn’t let that happen to herself. Even after her mom found Darrel, Mona had stayed adamant in her lone wolf mentality. It was the easy way out: you couldn’t get hurt if you never gave anyone the opportunity. Call it cynicism, call it daddy issues, call it friggin’ chicken soup, either way, Mona had been content. That is, until Bucky showed up and ruined everything. Mona knew that she should end their weird sleeping arrangements, but he needed her, and deep down she wanted to be needed by him. He was breaking down her walls, and she wanted to help him break down his.

Class started, but Mona couldn’t find it in herself to care about the way _Ulysses_ pioneered the Post-Modernism era of literature after World War II through the lens of European disillusionment. Her mind was back in apartment 5-H, the sunlight spilling in, his heartbeat drumming against her ear.

________________

“Mona.”

“What?”

“Seriously?”

“You know what, forget I said anything,” Mona said walking away from Luna. She started shifting through another drawer on the display. They were at the mall in Victoria’s Secret to pick out new bras, and Mona had made the mistake of trying to seek guidance from her friend.

“I’m just trying to understand here,” Luna said. She followed Mona and picked up a pair of lacy blue underwear to examine.

“It’s not that hard to understand, actually.”

“So, you sleep with him…but you don’t sleep with him?”

Mona squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath before walking to another display. Luna followed her, much to her dismay.

“I said forget it.”

“Mona Esther Johnson.”

“Don’t use my full name,” Mona said.

Luna put her hands on her hips. “Explain. Now.”

“Fine! Yes, I do sleep in his bed every night. No, we don’t have sex, we haven’t even kissed. Me being there helps him sleep better, okay? That’s why I do it.” Mona threw her hands in the air and attempted another escape from this conversation.

One of the sales associates came up to them. “Do you guys need any help?” she asked a little uneasily. 

“We need a lot of help, but you’re not a psychiatrist,” Luna deadpanned.

“Just let me know when you do need my help,” the associate said with a clipped smile before gladly walking away. 

“So what you’re saying is, you’re his glorified body pillow,” Luna directed to Mona.

“Ouch,” Mona said, and it did really sting to hear that.

Luna shrugged. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

“Would it even make a difference if we had sex? Reduce myself to just an orifice?”

“At least you’d be getting something out of it, too,” Luna said, inspecting a glittery yellow bra before putting it down with disdain.

“I do get something out of it!”

“Like what?”

“Friendship,” Mona said triumphantly. “We’re friends, and we’ve gotten closer, and it’s always nice to make close friends.”

“Well damn, now I’m pissed because we’ve been friends for two years and we’ve never shared a bed, not even in London,” Luna said. She picked up a plain black bra and placed it against her chest.

“Please, can we not do this,” Mona pinched the bridge of her nose.

Luna dropped the bra into her basket. “You obviously have feelings for this guy, which is fine. Steve’s a really great guy, he’s one of the redeemers of the male species, but you need to think about what you want.”

“I want to be his friend.”

“You also need to be honest with yourself.”

Mona groaned in frustration.

Luna turned to her friend and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re setting yourself up, you know that, right? You’re just gonna give, give, give, and keep on giving until he tells the next girl that he needs her to ‘sleep better,’” she said. “If you do just want to be his friend, cool, but you need to set boundaries. If you want something more, just tell him. Who knows, he probably feels the same way,” she shrugged. “And if he doesn’t, tell him they sell body pillows on Amazon.”

Mona’s shoulders slumped. She knew Luna was right (she hated when Luna made sense), but both options sounded like the last thing she wanted to do. Even so, she knew she couldn’t have her cake and eat it too.

“I know,” Luna said suddenly, heading over to one of the racks. She picked up a black satin slip. “I think you need new pajamas,” she said with a smirk.

“No I don’t,” Mona assured her.

“I’ve seen your PJs, you need new ones. Come on, let’s try it on,” she said, making a beeline towards the fitting rooms.

Mona stood where she was, waiting for Luna to realize she wasn’t being followed, but she never turned around and disappeared into the fitting rooms. Mona sighed and went in as well. It didn’t seem like she had a choice. When she got in, Luna had already chosen a stall for her. Mona stepped inside, slip in hand and locked the door.

“Hurry up,” Luna said excitedly. Mona flipped her the bird over the stall door.

She reluctantly took off her clothes and put the slip on. She considered herself in the mirror. The slip did fit like a glove. It hugged her waist in just the right way that it made her shape look hourglass-like. It was low-cut enough that you could see a hint of cleavage, but high enough that it left you wanting more. The hem reached just above her knees, but the slit went up to the middle of her thigh. She took her hair out of its ponytail and let it fall past her shoulders. She grinned despite herself. She didn’t look half bad. She opened the stall door to present herself to Luna.

Luna began to slow clap. “Oh, Mona. I think you better call the ambulance now.”

“Why?”

“Because you are gonna get split in half tonight.”

“Oh my gosh,” Mona said rolling her eyes and shutting the door again. “I’m not getting it.”

“Yes you are, this is non-negotiable,” Luna said from the other side. “In fact, there’s a red one you should get too, I think there’s a sale.”

“Luna, he doesn’t need this right now,” Mona said with her back against the stall door. She watched herself in the mirror. “He’s been through a lot, and he just needs someone to be there for him, not a maniac trying to seduce him.”

There was a pause. “You’ve been through a lot, too,” Luna said quietly.

Mona sighed. Would it be so bad to let herself feel what she was feeling? Maybe, just maybe, she was done taking the easy way out. It was just a stupid slip, but it started to feel heavy, like a lead-lined vest. She straightened up and squared her shoulders.

“Can you get the red one for me?”

______________

Mona had almost stopped and turned back at least five times during the short trip up to Bucky’s apartment. She was wearing the black slip from earlier, and even though she had ridden the high of confidence then, she could feel it diminishing with every step toward his door now.

She took a deep breath and knocked on it, holding her laptop against her chest. There was no answer, so she tried the doorknob and went inside. The shower was running in his bathroom.

“Bucky, I’m here,” she called out as she sat on the bed and opened her laptop.

“Okay,” he shouted back.

She heard the squeak of the shower knobs as he turned off the water. A couple of minutes later, he emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his hips while he dried his hair off with another. Mona swallowed the guttural sound that threatened to escape her throat at the sight of his bare and muscular chest. He walked past her to his drawer without so much as a glance, and rummaged around for clothes. Mona could see that he had that look on his face again, the same withdrawn and faraway look she hadn’t seen since that night at the hospital. He was so engrossed in his own thought that he seemed to forget she was there as he moved to unwrap the towel around him. Mona quickly looked away, then questioned why she looked away, and then immediately felt guilty for even having that thought. _You’re a hot mess and you’re gonna have to cool down,_ she scolded herself.

He sat down on the bed beside her with a fresh pair of sweatpants on and grabbed the journal that was on the nightstand. He started writing in it, a deep frown engraved on his face. She saw him do that sometimes when she was with him. He would jot down something short before tucking the journal back into a drawer. Now, though, he was furiously writing something down with a vigor she didn’t recognize.

“You can start the show,” he said without looking up.

Part of Mona felt disappointed. She had wanted a reaction out of him about the new slip (she had even put on a little mascara), but she quickly dismissed those feelings and replaced them with concern. Even though she wanted to ask about what he kept in that journal, she never did and wouldn’t start now. She put on the next episode of _Grey’s_ , but he continued writing.

Halfway in, she looked over at him again. He had put the journal down and he was lying on his back staring at the ceiling. There was a category 5 hurricane happening behind his pupils. She closed the laptop and placed it on the floor before lying down next to him, her head on his chest. He instinctively reached up and began stroking her hair without moving his gaze.

She didn’t know what to say, but she figured it would be best not to say anything at all. Whatever he was thinking, it seemed important and she didn’t want to interrupt him while he worked through it. Instead, she turned her attention to the fact that he had never put a shirt on. His skin was warm and still smelled like soap. She looked over at his left arm, where skin met metal. There were jagged scars along the seam, and she resisted the urge to reach out and touch them. She wondered what he would do if she leaned over and gently ran her lips along his scars. She thought about moving to his collar bone next, leaving a trail of slow and soft kisses as she went before traveling down to his chest and giving both of his nipples the attention they deserved. She would take her time and work her way down, down, down his torso until she reached that sweet spot between his hips…

Mona’s toes curled, and she could feel the extra dampness building up between her own legs. She suddenly got paranoid that he could detect it too, and she got up to go to the bathroom to take care of it.

He grabbed her arm as she got up. “You’re leaving?”

“No,” she assured him, and his grip loosened with relief. “I’m just going to the bathroom, I’ll be back.” The look on his face made her feel even guiltier about her nefarious thoughts.

By the time she came back, he was lying on his side under the covers and his expression looked a little less tortured. She sat down at the edge of the bed and placed the back of her hand on his forehead as if he had a fever.

“What’s eating you, Buttercup?” she asked, and he gave her the tiniest of grins.

He grabbed her hand and held it in his on the pillow. “I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “A damn lie,” she said, imitating the way her grandma would say it when they all watched the news together. Bucky laughed a little, and her heart did a floor routine. She got into bed facing him, her face only inches away from his. She felt his breath tickle her cheek.

“Where do you go, when you leave like that?” she whispered.

He shut his eyes tight before opening them again. “Sometimes…I remember things I shouldn’t forget.”

“Was it bad?”

He looked at her with an intensity that almost took her breath away.

“Yeah. It was.”

She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek, and he turned his head so that his lips rested in the middle of her palm. She smiled. 

“Turn around,” she told him.

He frowned.

“Go on, turn around.”

He turned so that his back was to her. She moved in closer and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. She draped her leg over his and pressed herself against his back.

“I’m a really good big spoon,” she said. She could feel his laugh reverberate through his body.

She thought for a moment before reaching up and placing her fingers in his hair. He always did that to her, and she suspected it was something he enjoyed as well. Her suspicions were confirmed when his whole body relaxed and rested against her as she made slow strokes from his scalp to the ends of his hair.

She continued until his breathing slowed and it was clear he had fallen asleep. She sighed and kissed his shoulder. It was then that she decided that no matter what, she would be what he needed. She gave herself up in that moment, let herself tip over the edge of the precipice she had been balancing on since the first night she spent with him, since that first trip to Mike’s, since the first day they met. She was his, and he didn’t even know it.

_______________

Mona woke up with a start. It took her a minute to get her bearings, and when she did, she realized Bucky was no longer in bed with her. She reached out and put her hand on the spot he had been. The sheets were already cool, like he had been gone for a while. She frowned and sat up. That’s when she noticed the door to his apartment was wide open.

“Bucky?” she called out. There was no answer.

She got up and checked the bathroom, but it was empty. She saw that his coat was still on its hook by the door. She doubted that he would have gone outside without it. She went back to the bed and stood on it to peak out the window above it. It was snowing, like the forecast said, and there was already a good layer of it on the ground. She glanced at the time on her phone. _Where would he go at 3 a.m.?_ she thought.

She grabbed her keys and made sure to close the door behind her when she left. She went down to her grandmother’s apartment, hoping she would find him there. She went in as quietly as she could. He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. She even checked the bathroom, her room, and her grandmother’s, careful not to wake her up. A pit began to open up at the bottom of her stomach and her throat felt like it was closing in. She forced herself to take two deep breaths and calm down. Something didn’t feel right, but she told herself not to panic just yet.

She went back to her room and slipped on a pair of jeans and grabbed her boots. Sometimes Bucky used the payphone outside of the building (she found it odd he didn’t own a cellphone), and thought maybe he was making an early morning call. She grabbed her coat and headed downstairs. She stepped outside and was immediately accosted by the cold. Despite the fact that it was already the middle of March, large, wet snowflakes came down in droves, blanketing everything in sight. The road was completely buried, and she could hardly see the parked cars. She made her way down the block, and she could clearly see he wasn’t at the payphone as she approached.

She took another deep breath and thought. She tried to rationalize that he was okay, that he was running some kind of middle-of-the-night errand, but she could hardly convince herself. She knew that if that were truly the case, he would have left a note at least, and he wouldn’t have left his door wide open.

Mona could feel the snow melting into her hair as she stood there, contemplating what to do next. The only option she could think of was to check Mike’s, which was open 24 hours a day. She walked back in the direction of the building to her car. She was about to unlock the doors when a stray cat ran out in front of her from the alley next to the building. She almost screamed because of the way it startled her. She placed a hand on her chest to recover, her heart going a mile a minute. She looked over at the alley. It was dark, and completely uninviting. She knew there was nothing but dumpsters back there, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of place you willingly wandered into at 3 in the morning.

_There’s no way_ , she thought. Despite her doubt, her legs propelled her forward and into the alley. She took out her phone and turned on the flashlight.

“Bucky?”

No answer.

She took a look behind her to see if anyone had followed her in there, then pushed forward, sweeping the flashlight around as best she could. Just then, another stray cat shot out of a dumpster, and this time she did scream, dropping her phone onto the snow below. She cursed and picked it up, quickly wiping off the moisture. Then she saw him.

“Bucky!”

She rushed over to him. He was on the ground, slumped against the side of the building, his chin against his chest. He was already covered in a good amount of snow that she couldn’t really see his legs. She lifted his head, but he didn’t seem to register that she was there, his eyes empty and still.

“Bucky. Bucky, look at me. Bucky!” she pleaded, but he remained listless.

She stood up and his head dropped down again. She knew she needed to get him out of the cold. She wasn’t sure how long he had been there, but she was worried that he might have frostbite or hypothermia. She knelt back down.

“Bucky, listen to me, can you get up?” she lifted his head up again but was only met by those same dead eyes. She reached under his arms and tried to hoist him up that way, but he was way heavier than she anticipated. She barely moved him a centimeter. She heard Bucky begin to mumble something incoherent.

She ran back out of the alley to see if anyone was around. As luck would have it, she spotted a man in a Yankees baseball cap brushing snow off his car.

“Sir, sir! Do you think you can help me?” she shouted as she ran up to him.

He jumped and looked at her with wide eyes. 

“Please, sir, my friend,” she panted. “He sleepwalked into the alley, I just need help getting him into our building.”

“Okay, yeah, sure thing,” the man said hesitantly.

Mona would have tried to reassure him that she wasn’t a maniac, but she didn’t have the time. She rushed back to Bucky, the man in tow. She put Bucky’s metal arm around her shoulders. It was ice cold, and she winced as it touched the back of her neck.

“Can you grab his other side, please?”

The man stood there balking. “His arm…it’s metal.”

“Yeah, he’s a veteran, he lost it in an explosion,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to contain her annoyance. “Please grab him.”

The man did so, and they hoisted him up, dragging him slowly through the snow. After a little ways, Bucky began moving his feet, but he still leaned heavily on Mona and the Yankees cap guy.

“Did he have too much to drink or somethin’?” the man asked as they reached the entrance of the building.

“No,” Mona said simply.

They got into the building and Mona pressed the call button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately and they got Bucky inside, propping him against the wall. He slid down until he was sitting on the floor, mumbling softly.

“What floor?” the man asked, poised to press one of the buttons.

“That’s okay,” Mona said quickly. “I’ve got it from here.” Even though the man had been kind enough to help her, he was still a stranger and she wasn’t too keen on him knowing exactly which apartment she or Bucky lived in.

The man raised his eyebrows at her. “You sure, sweetheart?”

“Yes, he seems to be coming to. Thank you so much,” she said.

“He might need the paramedics or somethin’.”

“I’m just gonna warm him up and then I’ll take care of that, thank you again,” Mona insisted.

The man seemed to take the hint and nodded. “It was a good thing I was out there clearing out my car, eh? Have a good night, sweetheart.”

Mona smiled in appreciation and watched him leave the building. She pressed the button for the fifth floor, and the doors closed, the mechanical whir of the elevator filling the space. She bent down to check on Bucky. He still had the thousand-yard stare from before, but he was holding his head up on his own.

“We’re almost there,” she told him softly, brushing back wet hair from his face.

The elevator dinged when it reached the top floor, and Mona managed to get Bucky to his feet. They stumbled to his apartment and got inside. Mona took him to the radiator by the bathroom and lowered him to the ground. She took off his wet sweatpants and grabbed a towel to dry him off. She checked to see if any of his extremities were changing color, but he was all clear. She wrapped the towel around his damp hair and got the blanket off the bed and draped it around him.

Everything seemed to be fine then, but Bucky began to shake violently despite the warmth and she panicked (it wasn’t from the cold, unbeknownst to her, it was muscle memory. His body temperature was rising, and in the past, that had always been followed by ungodly amounts of electricity ripping through his head and body).

Mona remembered learning what to do to help someone regulate their body temperature, but she didn’t remember where. She took of her coat and stripped down to her underwear. She coaxed Bucky to lie down and joined him under the blanket, making sure that as much as her skin as possible was in contact with his. His metal arm was still extremely cold, but she pressed against him anyway. She said a silent prayer, hoping that he would be okay. He eventually stopped shaking, and his breathing returned to normal.

“Mona,” he mumbled.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she said, holding him tighter.

They stayed that way for the rest of the night. Mona didn’t remember falling asleep, but she was soon being awoken by Bucky gently calling her name. She jolted awake and rubbed her eyes, groaning in protest at the sunlight that bathed the apartment.

“You’re up,” she said.

“Yeah. Why are we on the floor?”

She blinked away sleep and looked at him. He looked like his regular self, his eyes filled with concern.

“You don’t remember anything?”

He frowned. “It’s a little hazy. I thought I was dreaming.”

“You might have been, but you walked right outside. I had to get you from the snow,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “How do you feel?”

Bucky moved to sit up and Mona followed him. The blanket fell from around their shoulders and gathered at their waist.

“I feel fine…” Bucky said, but his voice trailed off as his eyes landed on Mona’s body.

Mona had forgotten she abandoned her clothes, but she didn’t cover herself up right away. She watched as his eyes traveled around, from her underwear, up her torso, pausing on her breasts, before dragging his eyes up to her own. They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, the air becoming thick with converging emotions. Mona finally wrapped the blanket around herself and stood up, offering him a hand as he followed suit.

“Good, as long as you feel fine,” she said. She turned away from him and picked up her slip. She placed the blanket on the bed, her back to him, and pulled the nightgown over her head.

“I should hurry, or I’ll be late for work,” Bucky said more to himself than to her.

“Are you sure you’re okay enough to go to work?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he frowned. “I’m good. I’m sorry I scared you.”

She smiled at him reassuringly. “It’s okay, I’m just glad I found you.” She stepped forward to hug him, but stopped herself, picking up her coat and the rest of her clothes instead.

“Thank you,” he said seriously.

She shrugged. “That’s what friends are for,” she said and her chest constricted. “I’ll see you later.”

He only nodded, and she gave him one last smile before leaving his apartment. When she got back down to her own room, she collapsed on her bed and closed her eyes. She had off that day, and she had every intention of sleeping until past noon.

_________________

“Hey, stranger.”

Bucky looked up in surprise at her and stopped in his tracks.

Mona was leaning against her car, her legs crossed and her hands in her pockets. She was parked just outside the loading gate of the saw mill.

“I thought you might need a ride home,” she smirked. “I know you like to walk, but it’s so cold, and after last night…” she left the rest unsaid.

He smiled and walked up to her. Some of the other mill workers walked past, giving them cursory glances.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“It was good,” he said. “But I have to say, it just got a whole lot better.”

Mona pushed off the car and stepped closer to him. “Hmm. I wonder why,” she said. She grabbed his cap and put it on her own head. His smile got wider.

They got in the car and rode in comfortable silence. Mona pulled up to their block and parked. She turned off the ignition and was about to get out but Bucky stopped her.

“Mona,” he began. She could see him struggling to find the words he wanted to say. “I’m a complicated person, to say the least. In the past, I--” he sighed and started over. He looked her in the eye. “I really appreciate your patience with me. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten close to anyone, and getting to know you has been…it’s made things easier. I hope I haven’t been taking that for granted.”

“You haven’t been,” she said gently.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure that’s true after last night.”

She took his hand. “I don’t hold that against you, Bucky. Honestly, being friends with you has benefitted me in more ways than one.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“For one thing, I’m a hit at work because of the snacks you bring,” she said and they both laughed. “And…I dunno. You’ve made me realize things about myself.”

“Like what?”

Now she struggled with what to say. “Like, it’s okay to let someone into my space, even though that can be kinda scary. And that maybe, it’s okay to let someone else make me happy, for once,” she said. She looked out the windshield and grabbed the steering wheel. “You’re a really good friend Bucky,” she said with difficulty.

“Is that all I am?” he asked softly.

She looked at him again. “What else would you be?” she whispered.

Instead of answering, Bucky leaned forward and kissed her. It was a chaste kiss, just his lips pressed against hers. He pulled back and she felt betrayed that he would deprive her so soon. She wasted no time and pulled his face back to hers, her fingers latticing the hair at the nape of his neck. She had never kissed anyone before, and she wordlessly urged him to teach her, drawing herself closer to him with a hunger that sent waves of heat racing through her. He answered in kind, wrapping his arms around her and encouraging her lips apart. His tongue swept over hers, and the moan he elicited from her vibrated through her teeth. He deepened the kiss, and her mind diffused into nothing but his mouth, his breath, the stubble that tickled her lips. He gently sunk his teeth into her bottom lip and her whole body clenched in an effort to contain her voracious need. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled down slightly, and the carnal sound that rolled out from the bottom of her gut and escaped her throat reduced her to a weak puddle. He pulled away from her, her heart going with him, and she almost gasped from the searing pain.

“Why’d you stop?” she implored. They were both gasping for breath.

“I thought you might want some air,” he said deeply.

“I don’t need air,” she breathed, and placed her lips on his once more. But she needed more, every fiber of her being ached for more. “Can we go upstairs?” she said against his mouth.

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. They never looked so dazzling blue as they did just then. Instead of a storm, they were a beach, the sun reflecting off of lazy waves and sandy shores, an island that only included the both of them. A slow smile invaded his face.

“We should go upstairs,” he agreed.

They got out of the car and headed into the building, but he caught her against the open door and placed both hands on the sides of her face before giving her a long, lingering kiss. She giggled, wrapping her arms around his neck. She hopped up and he caught her legs, securing them around his waist. They went inside, and he broke his elevator rule and pushed the call button.

What they didn’t see was the grey Prius parked towards the end of the block that still had a full view of the building’s façade.

What they didn’t see was the man in the car, his Yankees cap resting on the passenger seat beside him, a camera in his hands.

They didn’t see him take out a burner phone and dial a number.

“He’s still here, with her. I’ll keep my eye on him,” he said into it.

What they didn’t see, what they couldn’t have known, was that their days were numbered. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn....
> 
> Also, did you guys get that thing, when his body temp began to rise? I got that from the beginning of Civil War, when they took him out of cryo and put him in the chair right after. I just thought that fit. Let me know what ya think! I'm seriously considering the future of these two...


	8. Friction

“I’m kinda hungry,” Mona said, which made them both laugh softly.

They hadn’t left the bed yet, still tangled in the sheets. They lied there facing each other, letting their hands wander against soft places, breathing each other in and coming down from the high they had sustained since their kiss in the car. They were still attached at that saccharine spot where their hips conjoined, unwilling to let go of the feel of each other, the glorious friction that humans fell back on when their words and emotions failed. 

Mona rolled over so that she was on top of him, careful not to break their delicate connection. Her hair fell down around their faces, and their world got even smaller than it had already become. She placed her lips on his, not really kissing him, but enjoying the feel of them against hers. Bucky ran his hands along the curve of her back and around her shoulders, savoring the warmth of her bare skin. 

Bucky felt completely exposed, as if someone took a thickly bristled brush and stripped off the first two layers of his epidermis. Something in him shattered, something that needed to break, and it propelled him towards her at a deadly speed. He had no control over this feeling; he was walking on the clouds with no parachute, and he should have been afraid, but all he felt was a deep, integral sense of serenity that ballooned from his chest and cascaded over the rest of him. He felt torn apart, but not in a destructive way, in a way that would allow for something better to take place, something new.

Mona did begin kissing him then. She decided to experiment, undulating her hips deviously, and she achieved what she wanted, a moan from him that made every one of her nerve endings stand at attention. She lifted her head and smiled down at him, still astonished that she could get that kind reaction out of him. She was as undone as he was. Just then, her stomach growled in signal for them to wrap up their lovefest. 

“Oh wow, see I told you, I’m starving,” she laughed, which morphed into a gasp. “Shit, oh no," she covered her face with her hand.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I completely forgot. Anna and grandma are waiting for us to eat dinner,” she said getting up from the bed and searching for her underwear. “Anna was almost done cooking when I went to get you, and she said they’d wait, oh gosh.” She gave up on the search for her elusive panties and grabbed her jeans to shuffle into. She claimed her bra and fastened it with a speed that impressed Bucky (earlier he had struggled with it just a tiny bit, but it had been a while so he gave himself some slack).

“I’m surprised she didn’t--” Mona picked up her phone and squinted at it. “She actually did call. Twice. How did we not hear that, my phone isn’t even on silent?”

“Well, we were busy doing something else. Twice,” Bucky smirked.

She gave him a look and threw his shirt at him. “Come on, they’re probably ready to send out a search party.”

“Hmm, I feel like we should make it thrice, for good measure.”

“Bucky.”

He gave her an all too innocent look. He gasped suddenly.

“Mona, what’s that in your hair?”

“Where?!” she exclaimed, shaking out her curls frantically.

“Come here, I’ll get it,” he said. She walked over to the bed again, and he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down on top of him. She laughed, recognizing his ruse, and attempted to swat him away. He rolled on top of her and buried his face in her neck, leaving a trail of pecks until he reached her mouth and kissed her slowly and deeply. She wrapped her legs around him and allowed herself to be pulled under again, her body succumbing to his touch and being rendered completely useless. She whimpered involuntarily, every inch of her extending toward him, yearning for him. She was just about to shimmy out of her jeans when her stomach growled again, and this time it sounded angrier.

They both laughed. “See, I’m about to die of starvation, let’s go,” she said.

Bucky relented, and they both got up and scavenged for the rest of their clothing. Fully dressed, they headed downstairs and apologetically presented themselves to Anna and Mrs. Johnson.

“We ate already y’all,” Anna shook her head. “Where were you guys? The mill isn’t that far away,” she said accusingly.

“There was an accident,” Mona said as smoothly as possible. “It backed things up pretty badly.” Bucky nodded in agreement. 

“Where’s your coat, Na-Na?” Mrs. Johnson asked.

Mona stiffened. She cursed herself, realizing she left it in Bucky’s apartment. She couldn’t say she didn’t bring it with her because her grandmother had reminded her before she left and watched her physically put it on. She couldn’t say where it actually was because it would certainly garner suspicion.

“I left it in the car,” she tried, hoping she could avoid any more questioning.

To her relief, her grandmother just launched into a lecture about proper winter wear and catching a fever, etc. Mona graciously accepted the chastisement, and she and Bucky ducked into the kitchen to eat. Anna had made carnitas with cilantro-lime rice, and it tasted heavenly.

“Mmmmh, this is so good,” Mona said putting a hand on her stomach.

“It is, but I’ve tasted better,” Bucky said, giving her a sly look that made it clear he wasn’t talking about food and her toes curls. She tried to give him a stern look but she dissolved into shaking her head and bashfully biting her lip to contain the goofy smile that threatened her face.

Bucky looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen doorway to check if the coast was clear before dragging Mona’s chair closer to his and giving her a kiss that tasted mildly of sofrito.

They were so certain that nothing could possibly bring them down.

After eating and watching with amusement as Anna and Mrs. Johnson yelled at the news, Bucky announced that he was going to retire up to his place. They all said their goodbyes, he even said bye to Mona as if he weren’t going to see her in an hour or so. He walked up the stairs feeling lighter than he ever had and opened his door. He frowned. He closed it back up, then opened it again. He did this two more times before shutting it for good. He stood there contemplating.

The latch had a different sound to it, as if the locking mechanism had been tampered with. Bucky could feel his old instincts kicking in. Calm alertness fell over him like it always did when he had a mission to complete. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he could feel himself starting to shrink as someone else fought to take over. He stepped into his apartment and scanned the room, looking for any discrepancies. He shook his head. He wasn’t ready to let go of the euphoria of the day. He convinced himself it was nothing, that the latch had something to do with the way the wood of the door expanded and contracted with the cold weather. He strained to push invading thoughts to the back of his mind as he stepped into the shower and let the hot water rush over him and the steam fill his lungs.

Despite his denial, he still examined his entire apartment, any nook and cranny he could for something that would justify his concern. He was checking under the kitchen counter when Mona walked in.

“I hope you find my underwear down there.”

Bucky straightened up and turned toward her. Just at the sight of her, he felt the tension that had built up in him dissipate. He smiled, and she made her way to him, pulling him into an embrace and capturing his lips with her own. They managed to find their way to the bed without breaking apart. Bucky sat down, and Mona straddled his hips. She stuck both hands in his hair, and he grabbed handfuls of her thighs and butt. Their kisses and their breathing began to pick up speed, both of their bodies itching to continue where they left off earlier.

“You’re amazing,” he murmured heavily. She pulled back and studied his face.

“Show me how amazing I am,” she dared him.

And he did. 


	9. It's A Possibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, I struggled with how to continue this thing, but I'm pretty happy with it, loll. Let me know what you think!
> 
> Edit: Ehehehe, so, erm, I made edits to this chapter retroactively. I had cut out a scene before (the one that starts this chapter) but I realized that I wanted it in. Please don't hurt meeee

Sydney looked at the time on her phone. Mona was already 13 minutes late to the staff meeting that had been on the calendar for three weeks, and Sydney was worried. She and the rest of the tutors were sitting around the long, round table in the Writing Center conference room, waiting for their boss to arrive. This was an important meeting; they were supposed to put the finishing touches on the conference presentation they had in a few weeks in New York. Sydney wasn’t the type to volunteer for these kinds of things, but in her junior year of undergrad, she was determined to make the most out of her college experience. Plus, Mona had convinced her that she could do it, and it was hard to argue with Mona. Her foot began to shake anxiously, and she checked the time again.

“Do you think she’s sick or something?” she asked Ian, who was sitting next to her.

“She would have sent an email, girl relax,” he said, lazily scrolling through Instagram.

Sydney rolled her eyes at her front desk partner and started biting at her nails. It was unlike Mona to be so late; punctuality was her thing and she always made sure all her tutors were prompt and on time. Just then, Luna Patrick walked into the conference room and stood at the head of the table.

“Hey guys, Mona is running late and she sends her apologies. She should be here soon, but she asked me to get the meeting started, so let’s begin,” she announced.

Sydney relaxed. Even though she would have preferred for Mona to go over her talking points, Luna was a close Writing Center ally, so her feedback was also welcome. 30 minutes later as Sydney was giving her presentation, Mona walked in. Or rather, she floated in. Sydney had to stop in her tracks. It wasn’t so much the interruption that silenced Sydney, but the way Mona looked. Mona had always had a positive disposition at work, but now, she was completely luminescent. She seemed to be glowing from the inside out, light seeping out of every pore. She had walked in with a carefree gait despite her tardiness, and she even had a coffee in her hand. Her hair, which was free from its usual ponytail, looked full and voluminous, and the smile on her face could have lit up the city for days.

“Oh, Sydney, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Sorry, please continue,” she said, although she looked very far from sorry. Sydney collected herself and did just so. She certainly was not the only one who had noticed Mona’s new demeanor.

“What’s wrong with you?” Luna asked Mona when the meeting ended.

“Nothing, I’m good,” she said, taking a sip of coffee.

Luna swiveled in her chair to face Mona. “I know, you look good, what’s up with that?”

Mona tipped her head back and laughed. She stopped Sydney as she was walking out of the room.

“You did such a good job Sydney, I’m sorry I missed the first part, but we’ll talk later,” she told her.

“Thank you, Mona, and sure thing,” Sydney replied. She walked out but took one last glance at Mona, a twinge of jealousy and admiration hitting her. Whatever her boss was on, she wanted some too.

“Seriously though,” Luna continued, fiddling with a pen. “You’ve been way too sunshiny lately,” she said with mild disgust.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Mona insisted. “It helps you live longer,” she said, smiling more to herself than to Luna.

Luna looked at her friend, her face contorted in revulsion which slowly morphed into a look of realization.

“YOU BITCH!”

She had screeched loud enough that it caught the attention of the tutors outside who turned their attention to them through the glass walls of the conference room.

“Will you calm down, geez,” Mona said, but Luna only grabbed her wrist and escorted her to the break room. Luna closed the door and stared Mona down.

“You fucked Steve.” It was a statement rather than a question.

Mona scrunched up her face innocently. “Yeah, I did,” she squeaked out. Luna gasped and hit her.

“Ow! Did you just punch my boob?!” Mona exclaimed.

“Damn right I did,” Luna replied. “You didn’t even tell me! When did this start?”

Mona had a guilty look on her face. “A couple of weeks ago.” Luna punched her other boob. “Ow, stop it, they’re delicate!” she said, shielding her chest.

Luna shook her head. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“How good is he?!”

Just then they both heard someone clear their throat. They both jumped and turned to the table at the corner of the room where one of the sophomore tutors had been sitting undetected.

“Oh my goodness, Justin, you scared us,” Mona said, holding her chest.

He got up and began packing up his things. “Yeah…sorry about that. I just feel like I shouldn’t be in the room for the rest of this conversation.” He gave them both a polite smile before scooting past them and out the door.

“Sorry you had to hear that,” Mona called after him. Luna shut the door again and Mona gave her a look. “Great, now I know what they’ll be discussing in the group chat today, thanks.”

“You still didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m not going into detail with you, you perv,” Mona said on the brink of laughter.

Luna placed her hands on her hips. “Yes you are, over drinks later, I’m not taking no for an answer.”

“I can’t,” Mona adjusted her top. “I have things to do later.”

“Oh really? And are those ‘things’ named Steve?”

Mona looked at her for a moment. “Not even gonna lie, yes.”

Luna laughed and placed a hand on Mona’s shoulder. She feigned getting emotional. “I am just so proud of you.”

Mona pushed her away. “Shut up, oh my gosh.”

They both laughed and left the break room. Mona shot Justin an apologetic look as she walked past the tutors’ table towards her office. When she got there, she flipped on the light and her eyes immediately fell on the single rose that was still on her desk, the one that she had surprisingly kept alive all this time. She smiled at it and then rolled her eyes at herself. Mona was well aware of the newfound pep in her step and the reason for it, and part of her wanted to dish out a dose of reality, to remind herself that she had a rule against being this happy because the other shoe would eventually drop, it always did.

But she couldn’t find it in herself. Not now, not this time. So she kept on smiling foolishly at that rose.

_____________________________________ 

“Here ya go kid,” Rodney, Bucky’s supervisor, said in his gruff voice. He handed Bucky a white, unmarked envelope that contained cash. “Make sure ya count it, don’t wanna cheat ya,” he chuckled to himself as if he had made a joke. Bucky grinned and did just that and told him it was all there.

“Ya do good work, kid. I betta watch out before you come for my job, eh?” Rodney said, full-on belly laughing now, his scruffy white mustache jumping with joy. Bucky let himself laugh along with him before thanking him and making his way out of his office, stuffing the envelope into the inner pocket of his coat. He almost made it to the gate when someone called out to him.

“Hey, Steve!”

Bucky turned and saw a small group of the other workers trailing behind him. It was Jordan that had called him, with Chris, Dylan, and Joe walking with him. Jordan and Chris were on the younger side. Bucky suspected they were only a couple of years out from high school, and Mike and Joe were probably closer to thirty. 

“Hey man,” Jordan called out. “I’m sorry again about that fumble I pulled today, I really thought I had a good grip on that log.”

Bucky shrugged casually. “It wasn’t a problem.”

“Yeah, it didn’t look like a problem,” Dylan cut in. “You caught that thing like it was a feather, man. How’d you do that?”

“Uh, you know, it was just the adrenaline kicking in,” Bucky offered, and they seemed to buy it.

“Adrenaline?” Jordan muttered to Chris.

“Yeah bro, it’s like, a chemical in your body that gives you extra strength in stressful situations. Like those moms that pull cars off their kids,” Chris assured him.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I knew that,” Jordan said, waving away the explanation as if he truly did know. “But hey, Steve, we were going to grab some drinks, you wanna hang?”

“No, not tonight, but thanks,” Bucky said. The invitation was surprising to him though. It wasn’t as if Bucky wasn’t friendly with his coworkers. He often sat among them during lunch breaks and listened to their various conversations while he stayed quiet. They all worked together well too, but that had never extended beyond the borders of the sawmill before.

“Ah, you’re going home to your lady,” Jordan said, wiggling his eyebrows while the others sniggered.

Bucky grinned. “Yeah, actually.” He laughed inwardly thinking about how Mona would react to being called “his.” _You don’t own me,_ she would have probably said with her arms crossed and an adorable scowl on her face.

“She a baddie, bro. If you don’t mind me saying,” Jordan said, and Chris nodded in agreement. Bucky looked at them quizzically.

“You know. She _thick_ ,” Jordan continued, with extra emphasis on the “ck” sound.

Bucky just looked at them still.

“She’s hot, dude,” Joe intervened.

“Respectfully, respectfully,” Jordan added, lifting his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, you got yourself a Black queen, bro. I see you, I see how you roll,” he said, with a slight solemn bow.

Bucky chuckled and shook his head at Jordan’s ridiculousness. “She is something special, I agree.”

“You go take care of her, we’ll catch you some other time,” Jordan said with a wave, and the others said their goodbyes. Bucky gave them a tiny salute before turning in the other direction and walking towards home.

It was just past five, and the sun was still up, although there were wisps of orange at the fringes of the sky. It was still chilly, but Bucky could tell that spring was fighting its way through the last bit of winter. Bucky took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It had been a good day, and he was already mentally checking it off in his journal. He put his hands in his pockets and felt a small, folded up piece of paper amongst the loose change. He pulled it out, already smiling because he knew exactly what it was.

_I can’t wait to see you when you get home :)_

Mona was in the habit of occasionally leaving little notes like this for him to find, either in the pockets of his clothing or around his apartment. The last one he found had been a little colorful; it was entitled “Ode to Thy Penis” and he had found it in the middle of the workday tucked in his shoe, but thankfully no one else had noticed. Bucky had never read something so dirty yet so lyrically written before.

He couldn’t help but keep the corners of his mouth upturned as he continued the walk home. According to his journal, he was having an unprecedented streak of good days, and Mona was undoubtedly to blame. At times, she didn’t even seem real to him. It was like he had thought her into existence, that she was some sublime figment of his imagination that his mind wickedly drew up to torment him. But she was very much real, tangible, and every part of her was seeping into him, taking firm root in places where growth had seemed unfeasible only months ago. 

When he finally reached the building, he went straight up to apartment 4-C and let himself in. He was greeted by Anna and Mrs. Johnson in their usual spots in the living room, aggressively watching CNN.

“There are my girls,” Bucky said, giving them his best kilowatt smile.

Anna nudged Mrs. Johnson. “Hear that, we’re his girls now,” she snorted.

“You’ve always been my girls,” he said, giving them both a kiss on the cheek. Mrs. Johnson patted his cheek. “Mona’s not home yet?” he asked as naturally as possible.

Anna wasn’t born yesterday. She raised two grown sons and had five nephews. She knew a lovesick boy when she saw one, but she pretended not to notice the forced inflection in Bucky’s voice. “No, not yet, she said she had some extra work to finish.”

Bucky nodded and sat down to join them, trying his best to suppress his disappointment. They watched as different political pundits spoke about President Ellis’ chances of a second term, even though there was still more than a year left before Election Day. It wasn’t until around two hours later that Mona walked through the door and Bucky felt his breath return to him.

“The gang’s all here,” she said with a smile, hanging up her coat on one of the hooks. She let her eyes lock with Bucky’s for a moment before forcing herself to look away.

“Everything’s all good at work?” Anna asked.

“Yeah,” she said, walking over to the couch and planting a kiss on her grandmother’s forehead. She felt Bucky’s eyes following her as she walked in front of the television and she took another risky glance at him before bending down and giving Anna a hug. “I actually had to finish a paper, so I went to the library. I knew if I came home to you crazy bunch I would get nothing done.”

“Like you don’t got enough crazy in your own head for that,” Mrs. Johnson said matter-of-factly, and the rest of them laughed.

“There’s food in the kitchen, _mija,_ ” Anna said.

“Great, I’m starving, thank you,” Mona said. She glanced one more time at Bucky before heading into the kitchen.

Bucky sat on the couch for what seemed like an appropriate amount of time before getting up. “I was going to get a glass of water, do any of you ladies need anything?”

Anna fought the urge to roll her eyes. “I could use some tea, the water in the kettle should still be warm.”

“Sure thing,” he said and walked into the kitchen.

“Took you long enough,” Mona said once he was in and practically launched herself into his arms. Their hungry hands and hungry lips took over, both of them dizzy with relief at finally being with each other. Bucky hoisted Mona onto the counter and she caught him between her legs as he buried his face in her neck.

“I missed you,” he murmured in between kisses.

“I missed you too,” Mona said, lifting his head and cradling his face between her palms. “But I really did need to finish that paper.” She took in his face and ran her thumb against his bottom lip. “By the way, you made me late for work today, which is unacceptable,” she chastised him.

“Funny, I don’t think it was the word ‘unacceptable’ that you were yelling out this morning,” he retorted. She gawked at him and swatted at his chest, but he only caught her hands and put his lips to hers. They stayed that way for a bit longer, and probably could have stayed that way indefinitely if it weren’t for the news-angry outburst they heard from the living room that reminded them that they weren’t alone.

“I’ll go out first,” Mona said, hopping down from the counter. “Wait a minute before you come out,” she told him. She walked towards the door, but Bucky hooked a finger in one of the loops of her jeans and pulled her back to him. “Let go, now,” she giggled, and he did, but not before planting several kisses all over her face. She left the kitchen, rubbing the fatuous smile off her face.

Bucky leaned against the counter and rested his head against one of the cabinets. He could hear the beginnings of the voice in the back of his head, the one that told him this was wrong, that he was getting too attached, that he wasn’t equipped for a thing like this, but he quickly snuffed it out. He was becoming good at that, and he considered that he was perhaps a little too good at ignoring it. That small voice was still the one that had allowed him to survive all these years. It was the one that had gotten him through countless missions, the one that had guided him as he made the trek out west. It was his primal instinct, and he trusted it, but it wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear. Bucky was infected by his feelings for Mona, compromised to his very core, and the last thing he wanted was a cure.

He sighed and remembered the tea, opening the cabinet and rummaging around for the box and finding none.

“Na-Na, run to the store to get Anna some tea,” Mrs. Johnson said when Bucky had reported back to the living room. Anna tried to protest, but Mona was all too eager to run this particular errand.

“I don’t mind, I’ll run down to Mike’s. Chai, right?” she asked Anna, and she confirmed.

“Na-Na, make sure you--”

“Take Steve,” Mona finished for her grandmother. She rolled her eyes, but it was more for show than actual annoyance. “I know the drill, grandma. I’m only a helpless woman who can’t walk less than a mile without a big, strong man to protect me,” she said with blatant sarcasm. Mrs. Johnson sucked her teeth at her granddaughter.

Mona and Bucky headed downstairs and out of the building for the familiar pilgrimage. They fell into step with one another easily, and Mona slipped her right hand into Bucky’s left. After a moment, Bucky guided her around to his right side and secured her left hand into his right one. His excuse for this would probably be his old-fashioned notion that a lady shouldn’t be the one to walk closest to the street (“What if a car jumps the curb? At least it wouldn’t hit you first,” he said on a trip a while back, and she had tried not to choke herself right then and there), but Mona knew it was more than that.

It was the metal arm.

She noticed the way he often tried to avoid touching her with it. In the heat of passion, it was hardly noticeable, but it was during those in-between moments she saw how he maneuvered it away from her, how he only ever offered his right hand for her to hold, how he flinched slightly when she touched it unexpectedly. Mona didn’t mind the arm at all (she thought it was cool, in fact) but it wasn’t something he took lightly, she could tell. Truthfully, it bothered her; she wanted him to trust her, but the arm was a reminder that there were parts of him she may never fully know, the things that made the tempest rage behind his eyes.

“I think we should take this opportunity to discuss your junk food problem,” Mona told him when they reached the store. She was pushing the cart and was leading the way to the snack aisle.

Bucky frowned. “I don’t think I keep too much junk food around.”

“You don’t keep _any_ junk food around, that’s the problem,” Mona said, and he laughed. “I’m just saying, I’m a firm supporter of midnight snacking, and carrot sticks do not count.” She made the turn into the aisle and picked up a colorful package.

“These are called Oreos,” she said, over-enunciating the name and presenting the pack with a flourish. “They are delicious, and should be enjoyed with milk.” She placed it in the cart before turning to some other snacks on the shelf.

Bucky shook his head at her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders as she continued to examine the shelves. “I never really liked Oreos, actually. They taste like fake chocolate.”

She turned around and gave him a thoughtful look. “And yet, I am deciding not to leave you despite your terrible judgment. I am such a saint,” she said with a chuckle before standing on her toes and giving him a quick kiss. She pushed the cart along a bit further and stopped in front of the packaged pretzels. “There is something I wanted to talk to you about…”

“Oh?” he said.

She placed a package of pretzels in the cart and faced him again. “Yeah. It’s not really a big deal. Or maybe it is, I don’t know,” she looked up at him sheepishly. “I’ve never been in this situation before, and I’ve heard it’s a big deal, but honestly, who says it has to be, right? I mean we get to make up the rules, why should we let societal norms dictate what we do? Although, what I wanted to ask involves one of the biggest societal norms that people subscribe to, so there’s a kinda murky grey area there.” The look on Bucky’s face told her she was rambling and she took a deep breath.

“Right,” she continued. “So. A coworker of mine is getting married next weekend. And…I was wondering if you would like to be my date,” she finally got out.

Bucky leaned against one of the shelves and crossed his arms. “Geez, a wedding? I haven’t been to one of those in ages.” That was only a slight exaggeration.

“Feel free to say no,” she said quickly. “I mean, this whole thing,” she gestured vaguely in the space between them, “is still pretty new, and weddings are like these huge, uber-romantic pressure cookers and I don’t--”

“Mona,” he stopped her. “I want to go to the wedding with you.”

“Yeah?” she squeaked.

“Yes,” he assured her.

“Huh, well then it should be fun,” she turned and pushed the cart along to the potato chips. “Her name is Ameena, you haven’t met her, but she’s heard about you from a couple of the tutors and she told me I just had to bring you along, even though I didn’t check off I was bringing a plus-one when I RSVP’d,” she explained. “It’s in Seattle, me and Luna were going to drive, it’s only six hours away.”

“And we could ride the ferryboats when we get there,” he smirked, referencing their bond over _Grey’s_.

“We would be the biggest dorks ever, but yes, we could,” she said, drawing him into a hug. She tipped her head back to look up at his face. “Do you want to get married?”

Bucky raised his eyebrows at her. “Are you proposing to me?”

“No, I mean—not to me, just in general, I dunno” she stammered.

“Oh, good, because you don’t have a ring, and you didn’t get down on one knee,” he huffed playfully. “I deserve class!”

Mona laughed and shoved him away. He rested his forearms on the cart handle and watched as she examined the shelves for the right kind of chips. She turned to put her selection in the cart and caught him staring.

“It’s a possibility,” he said softly in answer to her question.

They looked at each other and they both let those words ricochet across their minds. _A possibility_. What had felt impossible before was laid before them now, split open and littering a path that led into forever, a picture of what could be, what should have been, what will be.

It was then, in the middle of Mike’s Mini Mart, that Mona let a certain four-lettered word slip out of her subconscious, and she snapped herself back into the present. She gave Bucky a calm grin before walking out of the snack aisle and to the tea shelves, her heart crashing against her ribcage.

Even though something was a possibility, it wasn’t a certainty, and for Mona, uncertainty was dangerous, but glancing back at the man pushing the cart full of junk food, she knew she could step into the unknown, fully and completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the hot mess! *ducks to avoid the tomatoes being thrown*


	10. Your Last Name

Ameena was in crisis mode, which meant she didn’t care who was watching or what they said, she was going to get done what needed to be done. So when she had marched into the lobby of Mona’s hotel, she paid no mind to the weird look the receptionist gave her light brunette hair, which was in big curlers, and she ignored the annoyed looks of the other hotel patrons as she squeezed into the crowded elevator with a big garment bag slung over her shoulder that practically hit the woman behind her in the face. She tapped her foot rapidly as she watched the elevator numbers go up, cursing herself for deciding to have an extra ‘Western’ ceremony to appease her white in-laws. _It’s okay, just think of that gorgeous white gown you get to put on_ , she thought over and over, like a chant or a mantra. The elevator finally reached its destination, and she bolted out of there, making a mad dash for the room number that Mona had texted her. 

“I am so glad you’re here, okay, here’s the dress, I hope it’ll fit,” Ameena said, bursting into the hotel room once Mona opened the door.

Mona, Luna, and Bucky had only been in Seattle for thirty minutes and they had already been pulled into a wedding emergency. The drive over (which had been more like eight hours instead of six because of traffic) had gone relatively smoothly. The ladies had lost just about every road trip game to Bucky, and he had gotten a crash course in all 18 years of Beyoncé’s discography. It was Friday evening (the wedding was on the next day) and the trio had just checked into their hotel when Ameena had called Mona in a panic. Apparently, one of her cousins had fallen ill, making her short one bridesmaid and she had hoped Mona could fill in.

“Congratulations, you must be so excited,” Mona tried, hoping that some positivity could avoid an all-out bridal meltdown.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks,” Ameena said, waving it away. She shoved the garment bag into Mona’s hands. She plopped herself down on one of the beds and held her head between both her hands. “I told her. I told her not to eat two-dollar sushi from a food truck. Sushi from a damn food truck. And that cheap! Now she has food poisoning, that _whore_ ,” she roared out. She began taking several deep breaths and let out a string of curse words in Hindi which prickled Bucky’s ears. Sailors had nothing on her. 

Bucky was sitting on the other bed watching everything unfold. He was trying his best not to be judgmental, but he was convinced that there were worse things in the world than missing a bridesmaid. His eyes happened to meet Luna’s, who was sitting on the chair in front of the vanity by the window, and they shared a look, knowing immediately that they were having the same thought.

“Well, don’t worry,” Mona said like she was trying to calm a skittish horse. “The dress looks like it might fit, so I’m just gonna step into the bathroom, and we’ll see.”

Ameena groaned, and Mona headed to the bathroom and shut the door. It was then that the soon-to-be bride became aware of the two other people in the room and attempted to compose herself.

“Luna, when you get married, do yourself a favor and just elope. Weddings are expensive and stressful,” Ameena said.

“Yeahh, I don’t think I’m gonna have to worry about that,” Luna half-muttered. She internally sighed and decided to do her due diligence as a sort-of-friend to Ameena and try to show some compassion. She walked over to sit next to her and haltingly patted her back. “Everything’s going to be okay. How’s Avery?”

“That asshole, he’s probably doing shots with the groomsmen right now, while I’m pulling my hair out. Useless piece of shit,” Ameena said bitterly, crossing her arms.

“You two are gonna be so happy together, forever,” Luna said dryly, giving Bucky that same look from before. It took everything in him to keep his face neutral.

Ameena straightened her shoulders suddenly, giving Bucky the once over. She cocked her head to the side and considered him for a moment before calling out to Mona.

“Mona, is this Steve?” she asked, her eyes still on him, though she wasn’t addressing him.

“Yeah he is, didn’t you hear me introduce him when you came in?” Mona called out, her voice sounding both echoed and muffled at the same time from behind the door.

“He doesn’t look like a ‘Steve’,” Ameena shouted back, frowning a little.

Luna gasped. “That’s what I said when I met him,” she said. She joined Ameena in her scrutiny of Bucky, and he shifted nervously under their gaze.

Mona laughed. “And what exactly does a Steve look like?”

“Not like that,” Ameena said with more appreciation than was totally appropriate for a woman that was about to get married. She narrowed her eyes at him. 

Bucky suddenly sympathized with those gazelles that were always on those nature shows, the ones who were eyed by lions hiding in the tall grass, ready to pounce. 

“Oh, you know that one kid who used to come to the Writing Center all the time,” Luna shouted. “The one with the terrible patchy facial hair and he smelled like cheese for some reason?”

“Yeah,” Mona said.

“That’s what a Steve looks like,” Luna said, and Ameena nodded rapidly in agreement.

“His name was Leonard though,” Mona said. There was a slight grunting sound, signs of a struggle happening between her and the dress.

“Doesn’t matter, that’s a Steve,” Ameena concurred.

“Okay, but what about Captain America, he’s a Steve, look at him,” Mona said, the grunting getting worse.

Ameena scoffed. “And his ass was born lookin’ like a Steve before they did whatever voodoo crap to him,” she said, and Luna fell back on the bed in hysterics.

Bucky let out a chuckle before pressing his lips together and stifling the rest of his laughter. He felt only a little guilty at laughing at the expense of his old friend.

Mona laughed too, but it was interrupted by a gasp. “Don’t make me laugh in this dress,” she said finally opening the bathroom door. “I don’t think I can really breathe in it,” she added. She shuffled her way out to the rest of them and presented herself. From the looks she saw on their faces, she could tell she wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of this one.

The dress was a ruby red satin mermaid gown that reached the floor. It had a square neckline with solid straps and subtle ruching that accented her bust. It was cinched at the waist and followed her curves until it cinched again at her knees and opened up like a fan on the floor. Bucky let out a low whistle and Mona shot him a look.

“It’s perfect, thank goodness,” Ameena squealed, jumping up and hugging Mona who teetered a bit from the force of it.

“Hubba hubba,” Luna offered.

“I don’t know,” Mona said, carefully making her way to the full-length mirror. She ran her hands over her hips and turned slightly, trying to see herself from different angles. “It’s a bit tight.”

“No, it’s perfect, that’s how the rest of the girls look,” Ameena insisted. She joined Mona at the mirror and put her hands on her shoulders, scrunching her face up in excitement.

“You don’t think it’s too booby?” Mona frowned, turning towards the other two. She met eyes with Bucky and looked at him expectantly, and the other ladies followed suit.

“I think I’m the wrong person to answer that question,” he said, one corner of his lips tugging upward. Mona rolled her eyes, but returned the grin.

“You look good. Almost too good,” Ameena said, turning Mona around to inspect the back of the dress. “Gosh, look at that _ass_ ,” she said. She turned to Bucky. “I hope you know what you’re doing with this.”

“He does,” Mona smirked, and the other two ladies burst into squeals and giggles.

“Mona Johnson, you are a godsend,” Ameena hugged Mona again. “Okay, so you already have the address of the hotel, I’ll text you the room number. Be there by twelve, we’re all going to get ready together and take pictures, the whole nine,” she adjusted Mona’s straps and admired the dress again. “Don’t worry about what to do during the ceremony, just follow our lead and everything will be great.” She literally jumped for joy.

Mona smiled, happy that she could help despite the fact that the dress was probably cutting off her circulation. “Are you ready to be Mrs. Avery Bartholomew?” she asked.

Ameena threw her head back in defeat, several of her curlers coming dangerously close to coming undone. “Don’t remind me of that ridiculous last name,” she groaned. “Part of me wants to keep my own last name, but my mother says I’m being selfish. I don’t know what to do.”

“Keep your name, screw him,” Luna said from the bed as she scrolled through her phone.

Ameena grinned and shook her head at that. She turned back to Mona and asked in earnest, “What would you do? Would you take Steve’s last name?”

It lasted for half a moment, but it was enough for Bucky to notice. Mona had been poised to answer the question, but something flashed across her face, a shadow of a look that encompassed several things that he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Just as quickly as it came, it went, and Mona plastered a smile on her face to address her anxious coworker.

“You know what, it doesn’t matter what you choose, you guys are gonna be a family no matter what,” she affirmed, and Ameena looked relaxed for the first time since she burst in.

“You’re right, you’re always right,” Ameena said with a large sigh. “Thank you again, Mon, this means so much to me.” She gave a little hop again before heading to the door and saying her goodbyes.

“Please, never make me one of your bridesmaids,” Luna implored, getting up from the bed and stretching.

“You wouldn’t want to be my maid of honor?” Mona pouted.

“After all that?” Luna said, gesturing towards the door Ameena just went through. “Not a chance.”

“I wouldn’t be like that,” Mona muttered, looking in the mirror again. She tried to suck in her gut, but even that small movement made her scared the dress would burst.

“Says you,” Luna snorted. She walked over to the adjoining door that connected her room to theirs and opened it. “Well, I am off to bed, you cool cats have fun,” she turned to leave but stopped short. “But not too much fun, okay? These walls are pretty thin, and I really don’t need to know what a Mona-gasm sounds like.”

“Too bad, you’re missing out,” Bucky remarked cheekily.

“ _Goodnight_ Luna,” Mona said in dismissal of them both, and her friend cackled before shutting the door behind her, leaving her and Bucky alone.

He got up and joined her at the mirror, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her torso and resting his chin on her shoulder. She overlaid his arms with hers and absentmindedly stroked the back of his hand.

“You look beautiful, don’t worry,” he murmured. He reached up and pushed her hair over her shoulder to expose her neck where he began leaving lingering kisses. She leaned her head to the side to give him room, but she didn’t melt like she usually did, her body rigid and unresponsive. He lifted his head, and they looked at each other through the mirror.

“You okay?” Bucky asked.

Mona paused. She looked at their reflection in the mirror, looked at their faces, their hands, their bodies. She made note of how she fit so well against him, as if the arch of his arms were made just to hold her. She considered answering truthfully, to take that pin and pop the sweet bubble they had made for themselves by dancing around everything unsaid for the sake of ease and peace and diversion.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Mona decided, leaning back against him.

But Bucky had felt the shift already. He could see the affected way her lips turned up at the corners, the way the grin didn’t quite reach her eyes. But he wasn’t ready to push that pin either. She turned around in his arms and wrapped hers around his neck.

“Let’s go somewhere,” she said, searching his face, for what, she didn’t know.

“Where might that be?” he asked, searching all the same.

She shrugged. “Anywhere, let’s explore.” She smiled a real smile, and he caught it with his own lips. While she didn’t melt, she did go soft around the edges, and she presented the dress’ zipper for him to undo.

Once she placed the dress delicately on one of the beds and put on regular clothing, they headed out into the Seattle night and wandered wherever their feet took them. There was a promenade not too far from the hotel that overlooked the water, and they followed it for a while in silence, hand in hand. The light from boats and buildings reflected off the bay, creating a second night sky that mirrored the one above. A light breeze traveled over the waves and nipped at their faces, almost like it was urging them to say something, anything. They kept walking until they reached a break in the path, where the promenade branched out into a small area full of shops and a couple of restaurants. An irresistible smell wafted up to their noses, reminding them that they had yet to eat dinner, and they chose a small diner to find refuge in. There were a few other people in there with them, but they found a booth in a relatively empty corner of the diner by the bay windows where they could still see the water.

“Welcome to Mom & Pop’s, I’m Dinah, I’ll be taking care of you’s this fine evening,” the waitress said with a wide smile when she arrived at their table. Mona had the passing thought that their waitress could have entered into a Dolly Parton look-alike contest and at least come in third place. Dinah placed menus on the table with the promise to return soon.

Mona looked down at the options, her brain not really registering the words. She looked up and watched Bucky as he scanned the menu, a little wrinkle of concentration between his eyebrows. He glanced up and caught her looking, and offered her a small grin. He reached his right hand out on the table, sliding it towards her with his palm up. To his relief, she took it in both of hers and drew it to her. She met his eyes with a grin of her own and slipped off the leather glove that was on it. She placed a kiss on his knuckles before putting it against her cheek and keeping it secure there with her hand. They stayed that way until Dinah came back with two mugs and a pot of coffee.

“Well aren’t you’s the cutest thing on this side of the Mississippi,” Dinah glowed, and the two of them sheepishly said their thanks. “What can I get you sweethearts, or do you need more time?”

“I think I’ll just have the cheeseburger with fries, thank you,” Mona said with a smile and handed the menu to her. 

Bucky looked up at Dinah with a raised eyebrow. “Is it too late for something off the breakfast menu?”

“Sweetpea, we serve everything, every day, at every time,” she said rapidly, like it was all one long word.

“Great, then I’ll have a tall stack please, extra syrup,” he said definitively before handing over his menu.

“Great choice,” she said with a wink and a smile and made her way to place the order.

“Pancakes for dinner?” Mona asked giving him a playfully unsure look.

“Yep,” Bucky said with a smirk, popping the ‘p’.

Mona shook her head and reached for his hand again. She felt the strain from earlier slowly relax, though it was still nagging at the back of her mind. She tried to make it disappear completely by turning Bucky’s hand over and running her lips gently over the soft skin of his wrist, which sent shivers up his arm and down his spine. Needing to close the space between them, he got up and joined Mona on her side of the booth, draping his arm around her shoulders, while she hugged his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. Even though she could feel the warmth of his body radiating from under his shirt, he still felt far away, like there was a canyon between them.

The food finally came (Dinah was not shy about gushing over them again), and the pancakes looked and smelled more heavenly than Bucky expected. He slathered a generous slab of butter over top, and relished the way the syrup cascaded down the sides of the stack. He couldn’t help but feel like a kid again, on one of those special mornings when his mother would dust off the griddle and he tried (and failed) to sneak a taste of the batter with his finger. Now, He scooped out a piece and graced his tongue with it.

“Shit, that’s good,” he hummed, closing his eyes to really savor the bite. He took a glance over at Mona after swallowing, only to be met with a look that was a mixture of amusement and shock.

“Wow, I feel like I should be jealous of those pancakes,” Mona chuckled, popping a fry in her mouth.

“Maybe you should be,” Bucky said mischievously, and Mona poked him in the side with her unused fork. Mona tried to get a taste for herself, but Bucky deflected her with his arm, pushing his plate farther away.

Mona scoffed. “What are they, made of gold?”

“I just really love pancakes, always have,” Bucky said from the side of his mouth as he chewed.

Mona smiled. “I didn’t know that,” she commented, picking at another fry.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Bucky said, and immediately wished he could shove the words back down his throat. He had meant it in a light way, a flirtatious way, but he realized far too late that he had struck a nerve. He watched as Mona’s smile grew tight again, how she looked away from him and took a lackluster bite of her burger like she couldn’t really taste it.

“Mona, I didn’t mean--”

Her hand curled around the pin with a purpose, ready to jab, stab, and burst open. She turned to him, her eyes serious and her lips already bending around the words to interrupt him, but Dinah beat her to it.

“How’s everything with my little lovebirds over here, do ya need anything else?” She asked cheerily. Anyone who knew Dinah would say that it was impossible not to match her joyous attitude, and Bucky and Mona found themselves at the receiving end of that theory.

“We’re good, thank you Dinah,” Bucky said affectionately, despite having known the woman for little less than an hour. Mona nodded in agreement, a smile finding its way back to her.

“You know what, y’all look too cute, you should take a picture. Here I’ll take it for ya,” Dinah asserted. She reached out her hand, making it clear that ‘no’ wasn’t an option.

Mona laughed softly and handed Dinah her phone. She stepped away from the table a bit and aimed the camera at the two of them.

“Smiiiiile!” she drawled out, hitting the button. She looked down at the picture she just took and placed a hand on her chest. “I just have to say, you two would make the _cutest_ babies, oh my lord,” she exclaimed as she handed the phone back. She promised to check back on them soon and headed to her next table. 

Mona considered the photo, realizing it was the first and only picture of Bucky she had. They had made sure to put on bright smiles, their arms around each other, like nothing else mattered or existed.

“We look happy,” she said, looking up at him with a renewed warmth.

“We are happy, aren’t we,” Bucky replied, somewhere between a question and declaration.

Mona just looked at him for a moment. “I would want our babies to have your eyes,” she said finally, just to have something said.

“Hmm. I would want them to have your hair. And your nose. And your smile,” he said, leaning forward and touching his nose to hers, hoping to get a smile. He succeeded and she pivoted her body so that she was facing him more. He grabbed her legs and placed them in his lap, massaging her thigh a little. She leaned back against the window and reached out to run her hand over his stubble.

“How many would we have?” she mused.

“Seven.”

“No. Three, at most. I’m not a horse.”

“Fine, three, no less.”

The light was beginning to dance in her eyes, and he was desperate to keep it there.

“What would their names be?” she asked, her hand migrating to his hairline.

He bit his lip. “David…Joey…and Rebecca,” he announced.

She sat up straight, brushing his hair behind his ear. She couldn’t help it, couldn’t let go despite the levity of the moment.

“And what would their last name be?”

There it was. It was only a question, but it might as well have been a dagger. The bubble burst in a confrontation of facts, or lack thereof. It was the question she couldn’t answer when Ameena asked, it was the question that made her question the foundation of this thing they were building together, or attempting to. Mona looked at him, the man she shared her body with, the man that had carved a space for himself in her life, and quietly begged him to let her carve her own, to cross that bridge, to tear down that dam behind his pupils and let her weather the storm with him.

“You know, I think they should have your last name,” he said directly, pointedly.

And every wall that had been torn down over the last few months went up again in one swift motion. 

Her heart sank to her stomach, and her face showed as much. She turned away from him fully, putting distance between them, as much as she could in the cramped booth, and he made no moves to stop her. Dinah returned with the check and they said their goodbyes, heading back out into the night. They made their way back to the hotel and into their room in silence that was so heavy, Mona could hardly take a proper breath. She wordlessly claimed the bathroom to take a shower, and he did the same after her. She was already in bed by the time he came out, facing away from him and pretending to be asleep, even though she knew he knew she really wasn’t. She felt the bed sink a little as he got in, and she could feel him looking at her back, could feel him wanting to reach out to her, but he didn’t. He laid down, leaving the space between them open and cold.

Mona felt the tear roll down her cheek and to her lips. Her tongue instinctively reached out to lap it up. Rage filled her when the salty taste hit. She hated crying in general, but crying because of someone else? Because of a _man_? She would never forgive herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writng this chapter made me sad :(
> 
> On a lighter note, you guys (all two of you still reading this), should check out the Bucky/Reader fic I wrote called "The Pact." It's super sweet and fun, and I had a blast writing it. Here's the official description:
> 
> Bucky Barnes has been your best friend since the first year of high school, and you mean the world to each other. On the eve of your 21st birthday, he reminds you of a silly pact that you had made: that you would lose your V-card to him if you had no other options. Will you go through with it, or will everything come tumbling down around you?
> 
> It's completed, so no waiting for chapters, lol! As always, feedback is very welcome!


	11. The Me After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I like Ed Sheeran's sappy wedding music.

By the time Bucky woke up, Mona was gone. He spent what seemed like an eternity just staring at the empty spot on the bed, re-playing the night before again and again in his mind. The thing he kept going back to was the look on her face. It haunted him, the pain it spelled out, and he couldn’t forget the cowardice that had prevented him from taking it away. He felt hollow.

_Told you so._

The voice in the back of his head taunted him. It was right. He had been careless, getting close to Mona. He had dragged her into his space with the naïve expectation that he could shield her from his past, keep her separate from his darkest parts. He dared to think that all of that was behind him for good, but it would always be a part of him, fused to his very marrow, and he had left his insidious mark on Mona.

Still, he couldn’t lose her. It was selfish, but she was the glue holding him together. She had cut through all the fog and dredged up the pieces of him that he thought had been cut out long ago. A cold bitterness spread through him. _They_ had taken too much from him already, they weren’t going to take her away too. It was his act of defiance, letting Mona in. They owned his past, but he would own his future.

Bucky slowly got up from bed and forced himself to wash up in the bathroom. He had just gotten out when he heard a knock from the adjoining door.

“Mona left already?” Luna asked when she emerged after being beckoned to come in.

“Yeah she did,” he said, ignoring the gnawing pain in his chest.

“Huh, then it’s just you and me, big guy,” Luna said with a smirk. She was still in her pajamas, her blonde hair unabashedly messy. She plopped down on the extra bed and picked up the hotel phone that was on the nightstand. “Did you know that their complimentary breakfast includes room service? I was gonna order some and watch some morning news, you down?” she asked, an eyebrow raised.

Bucky grinned. “Sure.”

She nodded as if to say he made the right choice, and dialed the appropriate extension. It didn’t take too long for the food to arrive, and by that time, they were already knee deep in the latest pop culture and political news.

“Ugh, who cares if she licked the damn donuts, let’s talk about how she’s twenty looking like she’s twelve,” Luna shouted at the television, her mouth full of bagel and cream cheese. The anchors were discussing what they were calling “Donut-Gate”, which involved a starlet who Bucky knew nothing about, other than the fact that she had an alarmingly high ponytail. Luna crumpled up the parchment paper that her bagel had been wrapped in and threw it at the screen. The news anchors seemed unaffected by this.

“In her defense, she did look hungry,” Bucky jested, which earned him a wad of napkins thrown at his face. He ate the last piece of melon on his plate (he only had the stomach for a Danish and a few pieces of fruit), and brought his empty dishes to the tray by the door. He returned to find Luna sitting poised at the edge of her bed, her hands clasped in her lap, seemingly waiting for him. He paused and looked at her with furrowed brows

“Pop a squat, Steve my boy,” she said. She gestured, and he sat cautiously across from her.

“Now that we’re alone,” she began. “We’re going to have the Best Friend Talk.”

“Can’t say I’m familiar with that,” Bucky said, still very unsure of where this was headed.

“Well here it is,” Luna said. “Mona is my best friend. In fact, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had. She found me in the library one day having an existential crisis, and we’ve been close ever since. I’ll do anything for her. You seem like a really great guy, and it’s pretty clear that you’re crazy about her, but,” she slowed her voice, “if you hurt her, I will hurt you. Badly.” The look on her face let him know she was deadly serious.

“You have my full permission to do so,” Bucky assured her.

“Oh, I definitely wasn’t asking for your permission, I was just letting you know,” Luna informed him.

Bucky smiled at her despite the threat. He remembered being the friend that threatened people who messed with Steve. He couldn’t count the number of times he had gotten a shiner or two for defending that little punk, but he wouldn’t have changed a thing. Steve was his person, and it was clear that Mona was Luna’s.

“She’s lucky to have a friend like you,” Bucky said.

Luna sighed. She had a rare serious look on her face, almost sad, but she grinned through it. “Yeah, but I’m luckier.”

Bucky looked down at his hands. “Did she tell you anything about last night?”

“Last night?” her glare returned. “What did you do?”

“Nothing—I mean,” he ran a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna fix it,” he said, and he tried his best to believe it. “I don’t deserve her, Luna,” he admitted quietly, his shoulders sagging with the truth of it.

“No, you don’t,” Luna agreed. She got up and sat next to him. “But she deserves you.” He frowned a little. “She’s been waiting a long time to feel this way. I think she’s had all of this love, trust, and pixie dust, or whatever pent up in her and she was just waiting for someone to vomit it all on.” She shrugged. “And she chose you. I’ve never seen her this happy before, it’s almost nauseating. But she chose you.” She patted his back. “Just try not to screw it up. At least not so soon, I know that’s asking a lot for a man,” she added.

They both laughed, and Luna announced that she had to start getting ready. Bucky figured the same, and Luna retreated back to her room while Bucky grabbed his suit from the closet. It wasn’t actually his, technically. Anna had dug up one of her son’s suits for Bucky to borrow for the occasion at the last minute. It was black, with a matching tie, and other than a few snug places, it fit pretty well. He wet his hands a bit in the bathroom sink and slicked back his hair neatly. He looked in the mirror and considered himself. He suddenly felt like he was getting ready for one of the many dances he used to go to, before the war, with a different girl each week it seemed.

_“What’s her name this time, Buck?” Steve asked, leaning against the bathroom door frame._

_Bucky grinned at his reflection in the mirror as he added a bit more gel to a pesky part of his hair. He grabbed the comb and raked it back until he was satisfied._

_“Susan. And her friend Carol,” he said, glancing at Steve. He opened his mouth to say something else but Steve stopped him._

_“No.”_

_“I didn’t even say anything.”_

_“You didn’t have to.”_

_Bucky leaned on the sink and shot Steve an exasperated look. “You know, it’s not illegal to have fun. You should try it sometime.”_

_Steve reached over and grabbed a towel off the rack and threw it at his best friend._

_“Damnit, Steve, the hair! Watch the hair!”_

He brushed off the thought and finished putting himself together.

“You clean up well, for a lumberjack,” Luna commented when they met up in the hallway, and they began their trip to the wedding. Mona had left the car for them, and soon, they found themselves waiting in a line of cars up the drive of the venue.

Extravagant wasn’t even the word.

Bucky and Luna stepped out of the car and handed the keys to the valet once they got to the front of the line. 

“I love rich people,” Luna sighed as she linked arms with Bucky and they headed inside. It was a sprawling country club, one of the oldest in Seattle, and Bucky was taken aback by the sheer decadence of the place. As soon as they entered, they were greeted by cheerful wait staff who offered them full champagne flutes, spotless marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and a grand staircase that only a princess would be fit to walk down. Other guests milled around them as they all waited to be seated for the ceremony in the next room. 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Luna said, taking a long sip from her glass. Bucky raised his eyebrows at her. “Listen, there’s probably gonna be an open bar, and I’m planning on taking full advantage of all the free booze,” she said unapologetically, and he just grinned and shook his head.

Bucky couldn’t help it. He scanned the room for her, even though he knew she and the rest of the wedding party were probably sequestered somewhere until the event actually started. Luna recognized a few people from work and went off to talk to them while Bucky kept to himself, leaning on the base of the staircase and nursing his champagne. He went over what he wanted to say to Mona for the thousandth time in his head, only to be interrupted.

“Quite the place, right?”

Bucky looked up to see Rick from the Grad Club midterms party standing in front of him. He was wearing a similar looking black suit to Bucky’s, but he sported a bolo tie instead. Bucky nodded a hello, and Rick moved to stand next to him, taking a sip from his glass and surveying the crowd.

“So I heard Mona got pulled in as an emergency bridesmaid,” Rick mentioned, grinning over at Bucky.

“She did,” Bucky confirmed. “I hadn’t realized how intense these things could get,” he said with a small huff of laughter.

Rick scoffed. “All this pomp and circumstance for an institution that fails 52% of the time,” he shook his head. “But humans are creatures of romance, we’ll never learn.” They stayed quiet for a moment, the soft instrumental music and light din of conversations filling the silence. Rick turned to face Bucky abruptly.

“How’d you do it, man?” he asked.

“Pardon?” Bucky’s eyebrows knitted together.

“With Mona. What’s you’re secret?” Rick took another sip. There was a glint in his eye with a startling intensity.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bucky frowned. Suddenly, he didn’t like the way Mona’s name came out of this guy’s mouth.

“You know we went to undergrad together,” Rick said, as if that should have been something everyone knew. “You should have seen me, following her around like a puppy. I tried for years, but she hardly gave me the time of day. Totally friendzoned,” he laughed with a bitter twinge. “Then we happened to wind up at UNI’s grad program together again, and I thought that this was my second chance, I’d finally nail her down. Then you show up,” he flung the words at Bucky like a subtle accusation. “So what’s your secret?”

Bucky sized him up, his hand tightening ever so slightly around his glass. “You’re fortunate, to have known her for so long,” he remarked. “She’s an amazing friend, you should feel lucky.”

“We are good friends,” Rick asserted. “She’s had my back, and I’ve had hers. And,” he looked Bucky square in the eye, “she’ll have my shoulder to cry on for every asshole that breaks her heart.”

Bucky smirked and downed the rest of his champagne. “I’ll think about that when I wake up with her head on my shoulder in the morning.”

They stared each other down, and Bucky waited for Rick to cave. He knew he would. Sure enough, he did, knocking back the rest of whatever brown liquid had been in his glass before giving Bucky a dirty look and sulking away. Bucky almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Bucky thought back to what Luna had said, about Mona choosing him. She could have chosen Rick, or one of the other myriads of men that she probably encountered in her life, and for all intents and purposes, she should have. They would have been the easier option, the path of least resistance, but somehow she didn’t see it that way. The last thing Bucky wanted to do was prove her wrong. 

Someone got on a microphone to announce that they would be seated in the main hall. Luna made her way back to Bucky and the two of them shuffled through ornate French doors into a giant room lined with floor to ceiling windows that looked out at the perfectly manicured golf course outside. They found seats in one of the middle rows of white linen lined chairs, and it wasn’t long before the spectacle got started.

Avery was already in place at the front with the officiant and his best man. Bucky could see him shuffle nervously as the French doors opened again and a light instrumental tune began to play. Two little girls dressed up like angles came skipping out first, scattering petals along the aisle as they went. A chorus of ‘awwww’s and laughter erupted from the crowd. Then came the bridesmaids and the groomsmen. Bucky’s breathing faltered a bit with the anticipation of seeing her. All of the bridesmaids were dressed identically, the same red dress, the same side-swept hairdo pinned back with crystal hair clips. The first pair came out, then the second, then the third. All in all, nine pairs walked out before he finally saw her.

There she was, on the arm of her groomsman. Her usual tight curls had been blown out and put into looser waves to match the others. Her beautiful brown skin glowed under the warm lights, and just the sight of her ruby red lips was intoxicating. She smiled widely and radiantly, mostly for the benefit of the photographers who had been snapping away (she didn’t want to be the one to ruin Ameena’s wedding album). Bucky couldn’t keep his eyes off of her even if he tried, not even when the wedding march began and the bride glided down the aisle.

Mona stood in line with the other bridesmaids at the altar, her hands tightly gripping a small bouquet of orchids. She couldn’t help but be amazed by the whole affair. Any other day, Mona would say that weddings weren’t her thing, but that day was an exception. Maybe it was because she was right in the middle of it all, or maybe it was because she was feeling particularly vulnerable, but Mona was spellbound. Ameena’s dress was something out of a storybook, complete with a huge ball gown skirt and a bejeweled tiara. She could see that Ameena was on the verge of tears, but she managed to keep it together as she walked towards her groom. Mona took a peak at Avery’s face as his bride approached, and her breath caught at the immense joy that it showed.

It was then that Mona scanned the crowd until her heart found what it wanted. He was already looking at her, his blue eyes just as beguiling from far away as they were when they were only inches from hers. They overwhelmed her. There was too much happiness, too much celebration, too much _love_ infecting the air, and suddenly the acute pain from the previous night was obscured. She gave him a smile but quickly looked away before she could see the one he gave back. She couldn’t take it, not when she was full to the brim like that.

The vows were exchanged and the ceremony ended, sealed with a kiss, and the wedding party paraded back out of the one room, and into the next where everything was decked out for the reception. The other guest followed, finding their table numbers and being seated for the meal. It didn’t take too long for Mona to find Bucky and Luna, who were already sitting with a few other people from the university. 

“You look glittery,” Luna teased her when she reached the table. 

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be able to wash this off for a month,” she said looking down at her chest and arms. Ameena had insisted that she wanted her bridesmaids to sparkle, and Mona had reluctantly been rubbed down with body shimmer. “I apologize for your sheets in advance,” she said to Bucky with a shy grin as he pulled out her chair for her and took a seat.

It was a small olive branch he didn’t deserve, the hope that she was still willing to keep him that close. They locked eyes with each other, several emotions stirring between them, all the words they wanted to say dancing at the back of their throats and waiting to be released.

“Did Meena go full bridezilla?” Lacey asked from across the table.

Mona rolled her eyes in amusement. “She was fine this morning, I think she’s relieved that all the planning is over.” She looked over at where the bride and groom were sitting. “Don’t they look adorable?”

Everyone at the table had to agree, even Luna. The sight of two people so obviously in love made even the hardest of hearts go soft.

Bucky felt something land on his knee. It was so slight, he could have missed it. He looked down and saw Mona’s hand, palm up, inviting his own hand into an embrace. He looked up at her. She was still talking to Lacey about something, only her profile facing him. He hesitated, realizing that she was sitting to his left. Sure, he could have reached his right hand across in a sort of awkward way, but Bucky wanted to do better. He took a deep breath and discreetly took the glove off of his left hand and placed it in hers, his heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. She looked down, startled by the cool metal against her skin. She stared at their hands for longer than she should have, understanding the tenor behind what he had done. She looked up at him, and without thinking, leaned over and gave him a feather-light kiss on his lips.

“Uh oh, are you two next?” Kevin, Lacey’s husband asked jokingly, pointing at the two of them.

“Don’t even start, Kev,” Mona warned jovially. “I get enough of that from my mother and grandmother.” She tightened her hand around Bucky’s and he did the same.

The ease between them returned, although everything was not forgotten, only paused. The food came out, the first dance was had, and the music never ceased. At some point, Mona, Luna, and Bucky found themselves by the bar, studying everyone on the dance floor like a team of anthropologists.

“Ameena’s mom is getting down,” Luna said, impressed.

“She’s not playing games,” Mona agreed. She turned and took a few nuts from the bowl on the bar and popped them in her mouth. “All I know is that they better play the Cha-Cha Slide.”

“That never fails to get her going,” Luna directed at Bucky, rolling her eyes.

“What’s the Cha-Cha Slide?” Bucky asked.

“You’ve never danced the Cha-Cha Slide?” Mona asked incredulously. “Sometimes I feel bad for white people,” she said, shaking her head.

Just then, the song changed and a plucky guitar tune rang out and a man’s melodic voice followed:

_When your legs don’t work like they used to before_

_And I can’t sweep you off of your feet_

At the first few chords, Luna groaned dramatically and Mona hissed a “yes” and pumped her fist. She held out her hand to Luna. Bucky could only watch in confusion.

“Pay up, sucka,” she said, opening and closing her hand in front of Luna’s face. Luna glared at her and reluctantly pulled a five dollar bill from her bosom and smacked it into Mona’s palm. Mona held it up triumphantly.

“This song is a year old already, when are people gonna give it a break?” Luna whined.

“I told you, this song is gonna play at every wedding for the rest of time,” Mona said waving the bill. “What else is Ed Sheeran good for besides making sappy wedding music?”

_And I’m thinkin’ bout how people fall in love in mysterious ways_

_Maybe just the touch of a hand_

“If I hear this song one more time, I’ll impale myself,” Luna promised.

“Try being me,” the bartender interjected from behind them. He was wiping the bar with a mildly traumatized look on his face. “I hear that song at least fifty times per weekend. Weddings, anniversaries, proms…”

“You poor soul,” Luna said gravely. She snatched the bill from Mona and stuffed it into the tip jar next to the napkins. The bartender winked in appreciation.

Bucky finished his glass (it was a shame alcohol could do nothing for him anymore), and turned to Mona. “I think we should dance,” he said with a wily grin.

“Hell no, Bucky, I’m not dancing to this corny-ass song,” she protested, but he was already leading her onto the dance floor.

He led her through the other couples until they reached a good spot in the middle of everyone. He gracefully took her into his arms, one hand on her back the other holding hers, and they swayed to the melody, even though Mona still had a pout on her face. Bucky smiled, and in one fluid motion he dipped her down low, and by the time she was upright again she was bursting with laughter.

“Well, someone sure knows what he’s doing,” she said gleefully, placing her hands on his shoulders.

He shrugged nonchalantly and pulled her in closer. “I’m a man of many talents.”

“I don’t doubt that,” she said. They swayed for a bit before Mona finally gave in and began playfully singing along to the words.

_“Cause honey your soul can never grow old, it's evergreen_

_Baby your smile's forever in my mind and memory”_

They both laughed, but soon the words began to hit too close to home, too close for comfort, and they felt the weight from before descend on them once again.

_I'm thinking 'bout how people fall in love in mysterious ways_

_Maybe it's all part of a plan_

_I'll just keep on making the same mistakes_

_Hoping that you'll understand_

Mona looked into his eyes, and she swore she saw that dam crack a little.

_But baby now_

_Take me into your loving arms_

_Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars_

_Place your head on my beating heart_

_I'm thinking out loud_

_That maybe we found love right where we are_

They stopped swaying. “Do you want to get some air?” Bucky asked.

Mona nodded slowly, and the two of them headed to the back of the room, past the bar, to one of the glass doors that led outside. The night air was a bit brisk, and Bucky took off his jacket and draped it over Mona’s shoulders as they followed a cobblestone path. They came up to a large fountain, and Mona sat on the edge of it while he stood, running a hand through his hair. The burbling water and the chirp of crickets was almost deafening in their silence.

“Is this just about sex for you?” Mona asked at last. She wrapped the jacket tighter around her, as if to shield herself from his answer. “Because if it is…I think I’m okay with that.” She thought for a moment. “Actually, no, I’m not okay with that. I’m kind of way past that.”

Bucky looked down at her. “It’s definitely not just about sex for me.”

Mona inhaled deeply. “Good,” she said, letting her lungs deflate again.

He sat down beside her and wrung his hands together. Finally, he held out his left hand and removed the glove again. Moonlight reflected off of his fingertips.

“I wasn’t very…specific about how I lost my arm,” he began haltingly. He fought to get the words out of his mouth. “There was an explosion, but that wasn’t exactly what caused it.” He sighed. “I was on a mission, me and my best friend, and the rest of our team. It was supposed to be a simple extraction, we would get our guy and go. We were on a speeding train, in the mountains, God knows how many feet up. Someone shot a blast at us, and it ripped the whole side of the car off, me along with it.” His throat tightened and he tried coughing a bit to clear it again.

“I was hanging there, holding on as tight as I could, but I could feel how loose the rail was, and I knew I didn’t have long. My friend tried to get me, I tried reaching for his hand, but…I fell.” He got up again, putting distance between them. “I shouldn’t be alive,” he said shakily. “And every time I look at this thing, I’m reminded of that.” He clenched a fist and looked at it like it was a poisonous snake.

“I’m dangerous, Mona,” he said severely. He was bursting at the seams, the whole truth beetling off the tip of his tongue, but he held back. He still wanted to keep her safe from some things. 

“Dangerous,” she echoed. She was still trying to process everything he said, her mind reeling with the unfamiliarity of his vulnerability. “We’re still talking about the man who wouldn’t let me step on a spider in his apartment, right? The same man who took said spider and released it into the hall instead of out the window because he ‘didn’t want it to get cold’? That guy?”

“I’m serious,” he snapped, and she jumped a little. He covered his face with his hand and took a deep breath. “I’ve done things that…” but he couldn’t go on.

She stood slowly and took a tentative step towards him.

“You’ve killed people,” she said quietly.

He looked at her but didn’t say a word.

She took another step.

“And some of those people…weren’t entirely bad. Some of them might’ve been innocent,” she continued. He looked away from her and she knew she was right.

It wasn’t the first time Mona had made that deduction for herself. He fought for the military, that’s what war was all about. Still, she had found herself doing more and more research about veterans and the stories they had over the past few weeks. It wasn’t surprising, but they were hard to get through. She had read about one U.S. Marine named Chris Kyle. He was the best sniper in recent history, logging in over 150 confirmed kills, but it was the story of his first one that really got to her. It had been a mother, carrying a child in one hand, and a grenade in the other. It was clear the intent was for it to detonate and kill the other Marines around her, and Kyle had done what he was trained to do to protect his men. He shot her. There was no background on the woman she could find; nothing that explained why she had her child with her, or if she had been forced to handle that grenade by enemy insurgents. War made people do desperate things, unspeakable things, and she couldn’t imagine the burden people like Bucky carried around every day.

She closed the distance between them and took his hand gently. “Look at me,” she whispered. He dragged his eyes back to hers, and she almost crumpled with the look in them. “I’m not going to pretend like I know what you’ve been through, and I certainly can’t tell you how to feel about it. But I can tell you what I see. And as far as I’m concerned, what I see is what I know,” she cupped his face with her hand. “And all I see is that you’re a beautiful person, inside and out.”

He tried to step away from her again when she said that, but she wouldn’t let him go.

“It’s okay if you don’t believe me now,” she said quickly. She placed both hands on his face to get him to look at her again, but his jaw was set and he focused on a point behind her head. “You don’t have to, not today, not tomorrow, not next week. But you will,” she fought the emotions threatening to spill out of her and tried to keep her voice steady.

“Eventually you’ll know it like I do, and like my grandma does, and like Luna does, and like the tutors do. I’ll make sure of it. And you know I’m never wrong,” she said, a grin forming on her face. She felt his body relax a little, his jaw slacken. He looked down, still avoiding her gaze.

“Why are you with me?” he whispered. His voice sounded broken, defeated.

Her hands slid down to his shoulders and she grasped for the words. “Because…because there’s something in me, and that same something is in you. And I can’t really name it, but I know it’s there, and when I’m with you, it starts to make sense. Everything makes sense.”

He looked at her then, his eyes sheened over, scared to blink and let everything come crashing out. He swallowed hard.

“Barnes.”

“What?”

“Barnes,” he said again. “That’s what our babies’ last name would be.”

Her heart bloomed so fiercely she swayed on her feet just a little.

“Bucky Barnes,” she could barely say through her smile. He nodded, his face starting to brighten. “I like the alliteration.”

“I want you to know me, Mona, I do,” he said, shutting his eyes. “It’s just…there’s the me before the war, before everything. And then there’s the me now. Everything in between is a blur. When I think back to before, when I remember…it feels like I’m thinking of another world, like someone put those memories in my head to help me hold on to something. It barely seems real, even though I know it all happened. And the me after,” he met her eyes. “I’m still trying to figure that out. You know about as much as I do.”

“We’ll figure it out together,” Mona vowed. She took a deep breath and said the words that terrified her, the ones that had lived in the back of her mind for long enough.

“I’m in love with you, Bucky Barnes.”

His face writhed between different emotions. His mouth opened, then closed again, fear gripping him from head to toe. He wanted to say it, but the tiny voice held those three words ransom for a reason he didn’t know.

“Don’t say it back,” she said with an understanding look. “Not until you’re ready. Honestly, I never thought I’d say that to anyone, ever. I just wanted to say it while I still can, while you can still hear it. So, thank you.”

He shook his head. “For what?”

“For being you,” she said simply. “Besides, it doesn’t really matter if you say it. I feel it.” Her face was so open, so beautiful, he knew he could live for another hundred years and never come close to being the man she deserved. 

He leaned down uncertainly, his lips hovering above hers, unsure if he could take what he wanted. She met him halfway, though, joining her lips to his, and the two of them coalesced into one whole, despite the pain, the suffering, the grief that tried to keep them apart. They had probably kissed a thousand times by then, but this one felt like the first, with the same newness and unknown potential. It was a promise; a promise that they were on this journey together, no matter how scary or unsurmountable things got. They were in it together.

For now.


	12. Paranoid, Part One

Bucky knew they were being followed. The car was keeping a safe distance; it was three other cars behind them, but he knew. They had just dropped Luna back home, and were headed to Cha-Chi’s for some dinner.

One block was nothing. Two was a coincidence. Nine was a problem.

“Mona, take the next left turn,” he said, his eyes trained on the rearview mirror.

“Why? That’s not--”

“Just do it,” he said firmly.

She had to skip a lane, and a few angry honks sounded behind them, but she did what he asked. Something in his voice sounded dire.

Bucky watched, holding his breath. The car was nowhere in sight. He relaxed, but not much.

“Do you wanna tell me what that was about,” Mona asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” he said, but he was still on alert. “Nothing, I’m sorry. I just got a bit paranoid for a second.” He grinned over at her and squeezed her thigh a little.

“Okay,” she said, glancing at him. “Well, tell your paranoia to chill, because I’m hungry.”

He laughed even though nothing in that moment could have possibly been funny to him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is getting harder to write because I know the end is nigh :(
> 
> ...or is it? Mwahahahahaha.


	13. Paranoid, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you ever write something, and you're just like. . .how did you come up with this crap? Yeah.

At a glance, a layperson would make the claim that the most lethal part of Bucky’s body was his metal arm. But no. Mona knew better. It wasn’t his arm, but in fact his tongue that was the most virulent weapon he had in his possession. Because at least his arm didn’t make her say stupid things like:

“What if we stayed in bed all day?” Mona said airily. “Like, not even get up for anything. Except maybe food.”

Bucky peeked up at her from between her legs and frowned. “Don’t you have that faculty meeting today?”

“Ugh,” she flung her arm out exasperatedly onto the pillow next to her. It was true, there was an English department meeting scheduled for that morning, and she did have to finalize some things before the conference in New York the following week, but Mona could hardly care at the moment. “That meeting should be an email. People just go for the free bagels.”

“What about class? Don’t you have Theory today? Or Modernism?”

She tilted her head to look down at him. “I’m sorry, do you want me to leave?”

“No,” he said, resting his cheek against the inside of her thigh. “But I also want you to graduate.”

“I will, it’s just this one day,” she whined. “I’ll be good for the rest of the semester, I swear.”

Bucky hummed his doubts, having heard similar sentiments before, but he glanced down and got distracted. “I like how you’re brown on the outside and pink on the inside,” he commented, biting his lip. “Like a medium-rare steak.”

Mona propped herself up on her elbows and gave him an expressionless look. “Did you just call me a piece of meat?”

He had a dopey grin on his face. “Yeah, like my little filet mignon.”

She stared.

“New York Strip?”

Nothing.

“Wagyu Beef?”

Mona tried her best, but she broke, collapsing into a fit of laughter. “I dunno even know what to say,” she gasped out.

He laughed with her, traveling up to her lips and giving her a couple of pecks.

“We get to stay in bed all day?” she asked with a pout.

“Fine,” he conceded, giving her a kiss.

“We won’t get up for anything?”

“Nothing at all.” Another kiss.

“Except food,” she added.

He chuckled. “Except food,” he said against her lips, kissing her a little less gently and for a little bit longer. “Speaking of which,” he said pulling back, “I should finish my breakfast.” He traveled back down her torso, followed by the sound of her giggles which quickly faded into soft, euphoric intonations.

Eventually, they did get out of bed for some actual sustenance, Bucky whipping up his famous scrambled eggs and bacon, albeit in the nude (Mona had added an extra amendment to their constitution for the day that made his apartment a “clothing-free” zone), but they hastened back to their mattress-laden refuge. They attempted to watch a movie, but it soon became only background noise as they painstakingly explored each other’s secret parts.

Lunchtime rolled around, and they agreed on having a pizza delivered. Bucky met the delivery guy downstairs (fully clothed) to pick it up. 

“Here you go, I don’t need change,” Bucky told him, handing over the cash and tip and grabbing the box.

“Thanks man,” he said, counting it and stuffing it in the pouch at his waist. “Have a good day.” He waved, but Bucky stopped him.

“Uh, there’s some…purple stuff on your face,” Bucky informed him, gesturing towards his own face to let the guy know where it was.

He sheepishly wiped it with his sleeve. “Thanks dude, I have no clue how long I was walking around with that. The farmer’s market is set up downtown, and they have that purple honey again,” he explained.

“ _Purple_ honey?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah. No one can agree on what makes it purple, they think it might be that the bees feed on blackberries or something, I dunno. I just know it’s the fucking best tasting honey out there,” he declared.

Bucky nodded and thanked the delivery guy again before heading back upstairs. Purple honey. He shook his head incredulously, wondering about all the other modern innovations he had to catch up on.

“Nuh-uh, clothes off sir,” Mona commanded from the bed when he walked back in and tried to put the pizza on the kitchen counter.

“Yeah, I was just gonna--”

“Clothing. Off. I don’t make the rules,” Mona shrugged, a mischievous look on her face. She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“I’m pretty sure you made them up this morning,” he simpered, lowering the box to the ground. He pulled his shirt off with a flourish and tossed it at her, and she caught it and held it up to her face coyly. He suggestively undid the drawstring of his sweatpants and threw them aside. He snapped the waistband of his boxer briefs and Mona barked out a laugh, completely eating up his performance. The boxers finally came off, and he stooped to pick up the pizza.

“Ooooh, slowly. Pick it up slowly,” Mona said in a sultry tone, and Bucky turned shy, shaking his head and trying to contain the flush that began to color his neck.

They ate in bed, the box open beside them as they sat close, facing each other. They couldn’t stand not having their bodies touching in some way, not for a minute too long. Mona took a slice of pepperoni and put it in between her teeth, holding it out for Bucky to take, and he did so with a salty, aged meat kiss.

“Is New York pizza really better than anywhere else?” Mona asked, her fingers slowly tracing along his leg.

“Better than Italy,” Bucky said matter-of-factly, setting down the rest of his slice. He pushed back her hair and held her face, just to look at it, just to _marvel_.

She chuckled, leaning into him and letting herself be seen. “Do you miss Brooklyn?”

Bucky thought about it for a moment. Since the wedding, he had started sharing more of his past with her, memories that had only existed in his head and in the pages of his journals. At first, saying them out loud was hard; he was protective of them because they were his only connections back to his mother, his sisters, and Steve, and speaking about them out loud felt like he was putting them in danger. But with Mona, they were safe, he knew it, and each story he told was a brushstroke that completed her picture of him, made him more whole, and made her fall even deeper than she already was. There were times he even considered telling her everything; in the annals of World War II history, he was nothing more than an asterisk, so he couldn’t blame her for not putting two and two together, but he always stopped himself. He wanted to ease her into it. Everything he had been through was difficult for him to accept, let alone anyone else. Plus, he wanted her to get to know _him_ more before he got to all the brainwashed-Russian-assassin parts.

He shrugged. “Sometimes. I think it might have changed so much that even if I were there, I’d probably still miss it. Besides,” he said tenderly, “I’d rather be wherever you are.”

Mona closed her eyes and got that dizzying, heady feeling that she would never truly get used to. If Pre-Bucky Mona were watching them now, she would have gagged and said that it wasn’t real, that life wasn’t a romantic comedy, and she would have dragged Now Mona out of Bucky’s bed and smacked some sense into her. But this was real, her love for him, and it was something she knew she could choose every day for as long as she could, as long as he would let her.

The leftover pizza was relegated to the fridge, and they burrowed deep under the warmth of the sheets and blankets. They were on their way to an afternoon snooze when Bucky mentioned the delivery guy and the purple honey.

“That started today?” Mona gasped, sitting up. “I missed the purple honey last year, it always sells so quickly.” She scrunched her face in contemplation. “Well, the farmer’s market is all about food, so technically, if we went, we wouldn’t be breaking any rules,” she raised her eyebrows at Bucky.

“I dunno,” Bucky said, pretending to be the opposition. “That would require physically leaving the building. I mean, just getting the pizza was risky, now this? Where is the line?”

“Purple honey, Bucky. Purple. And it’s not even food coloring,” Mona begged, mustering up the cutest pout in her arsenal.

He didn’t stand a chance.

A half hour later, they found themselves in the middle of the Semi-Annual Bearhooke Farmer’s Market. Although fresh produce was the main reason for the event, there were a whole host of other fun and interesting products to explore. There were more than two dozen booths set up in the parking lot of the mall, and they sold everything from fresh corn on the cob to apple cider cronuts, organic beauty products, and even handmade clothing. Mona made a beeline for the honey booth, and Bucky roamed around to see everything else. It was the middle of a workday, but there was still an impressive amount of people around. Bearhooke loved a good outdoor event.

Something blue and familiar caught Bucky’s eye at one of the booths. The sign said _KIT’S KNITTED KNICKS AND KNACKS_ , and there were (surprise) a myriad of knitted hats, sweaters, toys, oven mitts and more. There was one hat that was hanging in particular that caught Bucky’s attention. It was Steve’s cowl, or rather, Captain America’s cowl. It was complete with the wing insignia on either side and the large ‘A’ on the forehead part. It was small-ish, obviously made with children in mind, and it looked way more delicate and comfortable than the real thing. Bucky took it and held it in his hands, turning it over to examine every detail. A grin found its way to his lips despite the melancholy the hat summoned from the cavity in his chest. He was just about to get lost in his thoughts when someone tapped his shoulder.

“I’m sorry sir, but were you planning on buying that?” the woman who had done it asked, her worried expression aimed at the hat.

Bucky looked down at it. “No, I don’t think so. I was just looking.”

The woman visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank goodness. I’m sorry, it’s just that, it seems like that’s the only one, and I was hoping to get it for my daughter,” she explained, gesturing to a little girl a few yards away. She was with a man who Bucky assumed was her father, and she was wearing a blue t-shirt that had Steve’s shield on it, along with a red tutu and stripy leggings.

“She’s a huge Captain America fan,” the mother said with mild exasperation. “She says she wants to be just like him when she grows up.”

Bucky felt the cavity fill a little with the thought of Steve inspiring kids around the world with everything he had done. He was glad that everyone else knew how good his friend was, how incredibly and indelibly good he always had been. Bucky smiled and handed the hat over to her.

“Your daughter has impeccable taste when it comes to heroes,” he offered.

“He really is a hero, right?” she said, gratefully taking it. “Not bad to look at either,” she added with a wink and a laugh. She paid for it, and Bucky watched as she walked back to her family and presented it to her daughter. The little girl’s face lit up like a star, and she shoved the hat onto her head, hugging her mother’s legs tight. He couldn’t help but feel warmed at the sight, and after another moment he turned to look for Mona.

Mona had secured the violet-colored honey, two jars of it in fact, along with a few other things, and she was already headed in his general direction. She was looking down at her phone while she walked, finally checking the missed notifications she had from the morning, including texts from Luna:

Mona was reminded of the dangers of texting and walking when someone practically slammed into her shoulder.

“Sorry ma’am,” the man muttered, and he scurried away before she could say anything back. Mona looked up and saw Bucky not too far away, staring after the man with an intense gaze. Mona looked back too, but she couldn’t pinpoint who he was looking at.

“He said sorry, Buck,” she assured him with a smile. He kept staring for a moment, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows was still there when he looked down at her. “I got the goods,” she said, holding up the bag with the honey. “Oh, and look at these gorgeous plums I found,” she said, opening up the other bag in her hand so he could see.

Whatever disquietude that had plagued him passed, and he grabbed one of the plums. “I didn’t know plums could be gorgeous.”

“They can be. They have fiber, and antioxidants, and I’m pretty sure they’re good for memory too,” she said flippantly, recalling what she read on the carton of prune juice her grandma had in the fridge. She took out her phone to read more notifications.

“Are they now?” he said, regarding the little stone fruit in a new light.

“Shit,” Mona said, frowning at her screen. She groaned. “Don’t hate me. I have to swing by the university for a bit.” He gave her a look. “Don’t hate me! There’s an issue with payroll for the tutors, I just have to verify some things with HR. It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Alright, but you’ll need to make it up to me somehow, Doll,” Bucky said immodestly, glancing down at her lips.

Mona raked through the _Cosmopolitan_ article in her head. “I’m sure I’ll come up with something,” she murmured hotly. “Also, Doll? Really? Is this the 1960s?” she shook her head and grabbed his hand and they headed back to the car.

They got to the university in no time, and Mona went into one of the administration buildings while Bucky explored the grounds. The campus was in full bloom, with almost every tree dotted with white and pink flowers. Graduation banners were already strung up, celebrating the class of 2015, and there were a few frat boys on the great lawn playing soccer while others sat around and watched. It was just about that time when classes switched, and a stream of students came out of a few of the buildings and into the balmy spring day.

All at once, everything seemed to shift. Nothing around Bucky had really changed, but suddenly, the grass was too green, the sky too blue, the breeze too cool. He surveyed his surroundings, his ears picking the rustle of each leaf, the wings of the ladybug on the flower seven feet away from him, the clack of someone using a computer keyboard from the open classroom window two stories above him. He took definitive steps forward, driven by pure instinct. He rounded the corner of the building nearest him and followed the wall until he got to the next corner at the back of the building. His steps slowed and his muscles tensed, bracing himself for what he knew waited for him just out of sight.

“You’re getting rusty. I expected you to find me earlier,” the man said when Bucky met him around the corner. He was leaning against the brick, adjusting his Yankees cap, and lackadaisically sipping an iced coffee. He took off his shades and considered Bucky with no real concern. “I was practically begging you to come up to me at the market.”

Bucky tasted something bitter in his throat, but he swallowed it down.

“Rollins,” he managed to say, recognizing him from the bank vault in D.C.

“Very good,” Jack grinned as if he were commending a second grader for reciting the names of all the planets in order.

Bucky ignited and lunged, pinning Jack against the wall by his neck with his left arm. “Touch her again, and it’ll be the last thing you do,” he said through his teeth.

“Go ahead, do it now,” Jack said simply, his voice struggling under Bucky’s grip. “What would she think of you then?”

That caused Bucky to look around. They were in a pretty isolated part of campus, despite all the activity happening on the other side of the building.

“What do you want?” Bucky growled. He didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Nothing, really,” Jack replied. “I’m just the messenger.”

“For who?” Bucky pressed his arm further in.

“Who do you think, _Soldat_?”

Bucky felt his blood run cold. “HYDRA is dead,” he choked out.

Jack managed to chuckle. “Cut off one head, two grow back. Imagine if you cut off all of them,” he said, malice dripping from every word.

“What do you want?” Bucky demanded again.

“I’m just here to let you know that we aren’t done with you. You haven’t finished your purpose yet,” Jack said. His face was beginning to turn a light shade of red. “So enjoy your vacation now, but when we’re ready, we’ll know where to find you.”

Bucky thought about it, he really did. One flick of his wrist and Jack would be a lifeless heap on the ground. But he couldn’t do it, not even now, not after all the progress he thought he made. Killing had been his purpose for so long, and he didn’t want to give in, especially not when it was what they expected him to do. He released his arm, and pieces of brick fell onto Jack’s shoulder. He coughed and sputtered, catching his breath.

“Leave. Now.” Bucky said in a deadly low tone.

“Gladly,” Jack said, picking up his cap and dusting it off. He strode a few feet away before turning back to Bucky. “And don’t worry about your little girlfriend. I’m sure she’ll be fine, unless she becomes a problem.”

Bucky was about to lunge again, but Jack knew how to stop him.

“Or maybe you’ll take care of her for us,” he said, amusement dancing in his voice. “After all, it would only take a few words…”

At that, Bucky’s vision blurred and the air became too thick breathe. He stumbled backwards until his back was against the wall. He could have been bluffing. Only a handful of people knew his triggers, and Bucky couldn’t be sure that Jack wasn’t one of them. Jack chuckled and shook his head, putting his sunglasses back on.

“Until we meet again,” he said over his shoulder as he walked away.

Bucky stood there paralyzed with dread. They could make him do anything they wanted, and they weren’t above collateral damage. They weren’t above letting him murder someone he loved; they tried it before, and who was to say they wouldn’t be successful the next time.

Mona wouldn’t be able to fight back like Steve.

Bucky’s stomach lurched at the thought and he doubled over, shutting his eyes, each shuddering breath loud in his ear. He waited until his lungs could take a proper inhale before he willed himself to head back to the car. She was already there when he arrived, leaning against the car and fiddling with her keys.

“There you are, I was beginning to--” Mona began, but she saw the look on his face. She went up to him and brushed away his hair, her own expression filled with worry. “Are you okay?”

Bucky couldn’t look at her. He took two deep breaths. “Can we go home?” he asked quietly. It was no use though. Home wasn’t safe anymore.

Mona examined his face for a bit longer, but she knew not to push it, not now. She nodded. “Okay. We’ll go straight home.”

The ride back was silent and somber. Bucky was still shaken, but his mind was already beginning to form a plan, plotting his next steps.

_Unless she becomes a problem._

The only way Mona could be a problem was if she got in the way of their plans. The only way he could be sure she wouldn’t be in their crosshairs was if she was no longer part of the equation, nowhere near it. Which meant he couldn’t be anywhere near her. The realization set in, and he held onto it tight. It was the only way to protect her.

Mona went to check up on Mrs. Johnson, and Bucky went up to his apartment to put everything from the farmer’s market away. He sat on the loveseat by the kitchen and looked around at his apartment. He thought about the first time he stepped foot into it. The loveseat wasn’t there yet, and the bedframe had had a few loose springs in it before he fixed them. He remembered how alien he had felt, how it was just some place to escape the elements. Now, it was so much more than that. It was a home where his heart resided. The thought of leaving was unbearable.

Mona slipped inside a little while later and joined him on the small couch. He wordlessly enveloped her in his arms, holding her as close as physics would allow. She buried her face in his neck and breathed him in, leaving a small kiss in the crook of it.

“Do you want to try out the bath bombs I got?” she asked gently after some time passed. She looked up at his face, and he gave her a weak grin, nodding his head.

Mona filled his bathtub up and dropped in the fragrant sphere, and the air became coated in a layer of lavender and honey. She got in first and he followed, nestling back against her while she encased him between her legs. He let his head rest on her shoulder, and she spattered kisses around his cheek and shoulder.

He closed his eyes and savored it all. “What if we ran away together?” he asked half-heartedly. It wasn’t an option, but he could still dream.

"Hmm. Where would we go?" Mona asked back, slowly stroking his hair.

"We could go to Haiti."

"Grandma says Camp-Perrin is beautiful. We could go sunbathe at Saut-Mathurine after breakfast each morning," she said. She laughed a little. "But we couldn't go there, you wouldn't be able to eat anything."

He smiled, remembering all too well the first time he had one of Mrs. Johnson's authentic Haitian meals. It was a while before his stomach forgave him. It had become a running joke that he couldn't handle the spice long before he even met Mona, but in his defense, Caribbean food was a far cry from the boiled and bland food the 40’s had to offer.

"I would adapt," he claimed.

She kissed his temple and let her head rest against his. "I would want to go somewhere isolated, just the two of us. Somewhere so far off that we would have to take a five hour boat ride to get to the nearest town, and we'd have to stock up for two months at a time, and we wouldn't even show up on Google Maps."

"That's very specific," he chuckled softly.

"Admittedly, this is not the first time I've thought about it," she said, only a little embarrassed.

He sighed deeply, and let himself imagine it. The sun, the sand, the waves. The way her skin would tan and become an even richer shade of umber.

"We should have never left bed," he whispered.

She silently agreed, holding him a little tighter. Eventually the water grew tepid and they got out. The no-clothes rule was abandoned for the comfort of freshly laundered pajamas, and they got into bed once more. It didn't take long for Mona to drift asleep, but Bucky held off as long as he could, still contemplating, still calculating. Soon, though, his eyelids grew heavy and he followed her into dreamland.

He wished he hadn't.

______________

_He felt cold and wet._

_Cold and wet._

_That was the only thing that he registered, the first thing that he noticed every time he came to when they thawed him out._

_There were phantom hands on him, dragging him forward, his feet barely keeping up._

_They put him in a chair._

_Not The Chair._

_A normal one._

_But he could see The Chair, right in front of him, he could hear the hum of electricity, charged to take his humanity away._

_Someone he couldn't see barked an order, and they dragged another person forward, put them in the chair instead._

_Bucky's heart stopped._

_Mona._

_She looked across at him. She smiled, she glowed, she looked otherworldly._

I love you _, she said. She waved as they pushed her back, as The Chair came to life and it locked her in._

_Bucky fought, but he couldn't move. He yelled, but no sound came out. He cried, but no tears were shed._

_Then he heard her screams._

Bucky roared awake, hate, fear and anger coursing through him wildly. He grabbed the nightstand and threw it violently against the wall where it shattered into ragged shards of wood. He kneeled on the floor next to the bed, his chest heaving up and down, haunted by the images his mind had punished him with. His breathing slowed and he became aware of where he was. He looked up and saw her watching him from across the room, sitting at the table with her knees tucked against her chest.

"I scared you," he said coarsely.

"No," she said a little unsure, untucking her legs. "Not scared. Concerned, mostly." She got up. "You were having a nightmare. I heard you aren't supposed to wake someone up from a nightmare, I dunno why though. But I still wanted to give you space." She walked towards him but he flinched away.

"You should go," he said. His still damp hair stuck to his face.

"Bucky…" she took a few more steps toward him.

"Leave," he urged her. His voice was deep and gravelly, and just about as welcoming as a razor’s edge. 

She frowned. "No."

"Mona," he said like a warning. He began to tremble.

"No. I'm not leaving you," she said firmly.

"LEAVE!"

"FUCK YOU, NO!"

There was nothing but the sound of both of them breathing hard. Mona knelt in front of him. He tried to make himself small, but she reached out to him, gently cupping his face.

"Leave," he whispered.

She hushed him and drew him to her. He folded himself into her and she rocked them back and forth. She felt him shake with deep and punctuated sobs, and all she wanted to do was take away his pain. She whispered sweet nothings to him, but that only went so far. Her words didn't work, so she tried her lips, and she couldn't tell if it was her tears or his that she tasted on his skin. That wasn't enough, so she used her hands, her warmth, her hips. She took everything within her and poured it onto him, and he did the same in a rhythm filled with anguish, despair, and hope. A consort of _I'm sorry_ 's and _I love you_ 's harmonized between the sounds that the act of love made and melded into one another until they were indistinguishable. There was a desperation, an ardor that shocked them both, but they leaned into it because they needed it, hungered for it, wanted it to take them to a better place where pain didn't exist and where the boundaries of their bodies melted away until they didn't know where one ended and the other began.

After, in the stillness that followed, they lied there, his forehead above hers, giving silent reverence to what they had just done.

"Don't ever…" Mona said, but her voice broke. She reached up and made him look her in the eye. "Don't ever ask me to leave you again. Ever."

He couldn't speak.

"I mean it," she said. "I won't do it."

"I could have hurt you," he croaked.

She shook her head. "You could never hurt me." He tried to protest, but she was adamant. "Even if that had been me instead," she glanced at what was left of the nightstand, "you could never hurt me."

He kissed her delicately and laid on his back, tucking her against his side with her head on his chest. He didn’t dare close his eyes, and he couldn’t believe she trusted him enough to fall asleep in his arms again. He stared at the ceiling and asked himself one question over and over and over, but no real answer came to him.

_How am I supposed to leave her?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, i cant write smut, so please enjoy my thinly veiled metaphors instead, haha


	14. Look Back

“Do you have everything you need? Your keys? ID? Passport?” Anna fretted.

“Make sure to have your coat, the airplanes are cold,” Mrs. Johnson added.

“And don’t forget that flash drive you said you needed,” Bucky noted.

Mona groaned as she shuffled into the living room with her carry-on bag slung over her shoulder. “Guys, I know how to pack for a trip, I have everything,” she assured them. She put the bag on the floor and rummaged around in her purse that was on the couch. She slowly looked up at the three of them, her lips pressed together.

“Okay, so I forgot to grab my passport, but that doesn’t count. Technically, you don’t need it for domestic flights, I’m just taking it with me just in case,” she admitted. She hurried back to her room and returned with the small navy blue book in hand, making sure to stuff it in her purse. She dusted her hands off together in satisfaction and placed them on her hips. “Now I have everything.”

“Oh, my dear, be careful,” Anna said, rushing to squeeze Mona in a tight hug.

“Anna, I’ll be fine. Statistically speaking, flying is way safer than driving,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by Anna’s cardigan. She pulled away and rubbed the nurse’s arms reassuringly before heading over to her grandmother on the recliner.

“Your coat,” Mrs. Johnson told her granddaughter again.

Mona smiled and rolled her eyes, bending down to give her a kiss. “Yes grandma, I’ll take it. Even though it’s May and it’s 60 degrees out.” They shared a prolonged hug before Mrs. Johnson shooed her away.

Mona’s phone rang and she practically dove onto the couch to grab it from her purse. It was her taxi driver letting her know that he was waiting outside the building, and she told him she’d be right down.

“Alright, I’m off. Try not to throw any wild parties while I’m gone,” Mona joked.

“Don’t forget my snow globe,” Anna said. She was a dedicated collector of the glass orbs. There wasn’t a room in her house that didn’t have one. 

“I will not forget,” Mona promised. She turned to Bucky and tilted her head to the side in resignation. “I would grab my bags, but I know you’ll just take them from me.”

Bucky grinned and placed a light kiss on her forehead. “You learn so fast.”

Mona said her last goodbyes, and they headed downstairs where the taxi waited.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been to the top of the Empire State Building,” Mona said as Bucky loaded her things into the trunk.

He slammed it shut and shrugged. “It’s just for tourists. Why would I need to see the city from up high when I live in it every day?”

“Still, I’m gonna take a lot of pictures for you to look at when I get back,” she declared. She sighed and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his middle and placing her head on his chest. 

“Are you nervous?” he murmured into her hair.

“No,” she shrugged. “Not really. Sydney and Justin are the ones doing the brunt of it, and they’re gonna do great. I’m just there for moral support. And to help the university avoid liability,” she said with a small laugh. She nestled her face into his shirt, wishing she could somehow take this hug with her. He burrowed his face deeper into her hair and drank in the smell of rosewater and coconut oil.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Mona said, pulling back and trying to build up some resolve. “I’m not even going to be gone for a full week, this is ridiculous,” she said as the ache in her chest grew. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she added, more for herself than for him.

_Don’t do anything stupid ‘til I get back._

Bucky got a flash of his last night in New York, the last time things had seemed normal. When he had said goodbye to Steve, he was convinced that it wouldn’t be long before the war was over and they’d step right back into how things were. He was ignorant to how much things would change, and looking back, he wasn’t sure if that ignorance was truly bliss or if it had been some form of torturous denial. Now, he was on the other side of things. Mona was the one saying goodbye, and he was the one being left behind, or at least that’s how it seemed. It was no easier for Bucky this time around, knowing what he had to do. Back then, he did it for his country and his best friend. Now, he was doing it for the woman he loved, the one person who owned every part of him.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Mona, I need you to know,” he began, but there was so much running through his mind that his mouth couldn’t keep up. “I just…I want you to know that,” he looked at her and ran a hand through his hair. “You mean everything to me,” he finally got out.

She considered him for a moment. “But?” she said.

He frowned.

“I dunno, it kinda sounded like you wanted to add a ‘but’ to the end of that,” she said, an unfixed grin on her face.

He shook his head slowly. “No but. Just a period.”

She went to him again and pulled him close. “You mean everything to me too,” she whispered. Bucky tightened his grip around her, saying a silent prayer that he never had to let go, but the taxi driver had other plans.

“Hey, I hate to break this up, but I can’t stay idle for too long,” he said from out the driver’s side window. In his line of work, it wasn’t uncommon to have to interrupt the farewells of others. It was harder in the beginning, but it didn’t take him long to become desensitized to it.

“Okay, I’m coming,” Mona assured him. She stepped away from Bucky and laughed a little. “Gosh, we’re acting like this is the end of the world.”

Bucky’s fingers ached, and his left arm somehow felt numb. He wanted to tell her to stay. No, he wanted to get her bags from the trunk and take her with him, far away, just the two of them, just how she wanted. His stomach sank into an abyss and there was a shredding, pulsing pain that replaced his heartbeat. 

_How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you._

_Maybe you’ll take care of her for us._

_Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line._

_Say it. Say it now. Tell her, while she can still hear it._

“For goodness sake, Bucky, it’s four days, we’ll survive,” Mona laughed, seeing the look on his face. She caught him in her arms again and smiled up at him. She was about to reach up and kiss him, but she stopped herself.

“Nope, you know what, you’ll get a kiss when I’m back,” she said, leaving his arms and opening the taxi door. “That way, you have something to look forward to. Actually, you’ll have a lot to look forward to. A lot,” she said. She wiggled her eyebrows and finally ducked into the back seat, the door closing with a loud thud.

With that, the taxi drove away, taking half of him with it.

Bucky stood there a while after it drove out of view. That wasn’t the goodbye he had wanted, but he supposed no goodbye would have been satisfying. He wanted more time with her, he wanted forever, but that was never a choice he had in the first place. He wasn’t sure what choices he had in front of him anymore. The last definitive decision he made was back on the banks of the Potomac as he walked away from the man he was ordered to kill, who he had pulled up from the biting current because some lost part of him had found its way back. He had walked away knowing that it was the right thing to do, that it was what _he_ wanted to do, and he didn’t look back. That decision led him here, to this unassuming town in Idaho that held the sun, and he had to watch her go knowing it would probably be the last time he felt this warm. The choices he made now were imprisoned by the choices that were taken away from him before, and the pain he felt was a cruel reminder of that.

He finally went back upstairs and into Mrs. Johnson’s apartment. He sat on the couch with the matriarch in front of the television while Anna fixed something up in the kitchen. One of her soap operas was on, a brief respite from the usual news that got her riled up. Something, Bucky couldn’t tell what, prompted Mrs. Johnson to start talking about her life in Haiti. She told a funny story about how her cousins would always get her in trouble by sneaking limes off of the neighbors’ property, and how she was the one who always got the switch because she was the oldest. There was a nostalgia in her voice that sounded wistful, as if she wanted to go back, which made Bucky finally ask the question he always had when he saw her get that way.

“Wasn’t it hard to leave your family? Your home?” he asked after her story was finished.

She was silent for a moment, and Bucky thought she hadn’t heard him. She answered just as he was about to ask again.

“Very hard,” she said, nodding solemnly towards the T.V. “Very, very hard.”

“How’d you do it then?” He needed reassurance, to know it was possible without completely falling apart.

She shrugged and held her hands out in surrender. “At some point, you know when to go. You know when you belong someplace else,” she said. She looked over at him. “You just trust in that…and go.”

Bucky didn’t know if that was the answer he had wanted to hear, but it was something. He smiled over at Mrs. Johnson. “You know, you’re the first friend I ever made here.”

She sucked her teeth at him, not one to indulge in sentimentalities. “You need new friends,” she said, and he laughed. He got up and placed a kiss on her cheek.

“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson,” he said quietly. She patted his cheek before returning her attention back to her show.

He went into the kitchen to see Anna. It looked like she was getting everything ready to make flan, and Bucky offered his assistance.

“Oh, no _mijo_ , I’m good. Just get your belly ready for it,” she said excitedly. She cracked another egg before looking back to Bucky and bursting out laughing. “Oy, to be young and in love,” she said shaking her head. “She’s gonna be back before you know it. You youngins are so dramatic. Wait until you get to be old like me,” she laughed again.

“You’re not old,” Bucky grinned.

“And that’s why we keep you around Steve,” she joked. She turned to him fully and placed her hand on her hip. “You remind me so much of my sons. Such a good boy,” she declared.

Bucky took a deep breath to release the emotions warring in his chest. “Thank you, Anna,” he managed to say. “I’m gonna head up now, I think.”

They hugged and he went up to apartment 5-H. He went over to his bed and plopped down on it, closing his eyes. It wasn’t long until sundown, when he’d have the cover of night. That’s when he would leave for good. He felt like a coward for not telling Mona the truth. It was what she deserved, but the less she knew, the better. If anyone came to question her, she wouldn’t have to lie because she just wouldn’t know. Selfishly, he didn’t want to tell her he was leaving because he knew he couldn’t handle it. She would have probably asked him to stay, and he would have caved. Or worse yet, she would have told him that she would go with him, and that couldn’t happen either. Her life was here in Bearhooke, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to her. Bucky sighed and tried to sink deeper into the mattress. He allowed his mind to wander to something from the not-so-distant past:

_She had brushed back the same strand of curls about seven times already. He would know, he was counting. She was sitting next to him on the bed on her laptop, finishing up a short paper_ , _and he was lying back on his pillow, just staring at her profile. It was a week into their new sleeping arrangement, and it was just starting to feel less new and more like an old, comfortable sweater. She happened to look back at him and catch him looking at her._

_“What?” she asked, a small wrinkle forming between her eyebrows._

_He shook his head. “Nothing.” He didn’t bother looking away. He was utterly transfixed._

_“What?” she urged again, nudging his leg. “Is the light from the screen bothering you? Because I can turn around, if that would help you fall asleep.”_

_He was going to say he was fine, but she was already maneuvering herself so that she sat facing him, the screen obscured from his view. He didn’t mind though, because he had a much better view of her face that way. He watched as she frowned in concentration while she worked, the sound of her fingers hitting the keys like a weird lullaby. He could see that stubborn strand of hair loosening up again, ready to fall into her face for the eighth time. He took preemptive measures, sitting up and gently placing his fingers in her hair. He gathered the pesky strand and tucked it neatly into the rest of her curls, which were secured in a ponytail. He thought he felt her shiver under his touch._

_“There. That should do it,” he said, laying back down._

_She did that thing where she tried not to grin, but it always won out in the end. “You’re just about the only person I let touch my hair like that, besides myself.”_

_“Really? Why is that?” he asked._

_“Because nobody needs to be touching my hair like that,” she said defiantly. “My hair is my business, give me my space.”_

_He chuckled a little. “No, I meant why do you let_ me _touch your hair?”_

_She just looked at him for a moment. “That’s a good question. I’ll let you know when I have the answer.”_

_They held each other’s gaze for what could have been a minute or an hour, letting their hidden feelings sizzle just under the surface._

_“Hurry up so we can watch_ Grey’s _,” he said, breaking the silence. “I need to know if McDreamy picks Meredith or Addison.”_

_She laughed. “Boy, I am trying to get a degree here, hold your horses.”_

Mona was already starting to feel like a memory to him, one of those far off dreams that left him wanting and yearning. He sat up and steeled himself for what was to come next. He went over to the loveseat and turned it on its back so that he could access the bottom. After a bit of wrestling, he was able to separate the base from the rest of it, revealing the makeshift compartment he had hollowed out a while ago. In it contained his backpack, the only possession that he had when he arrived here, and it was the only thing that really mattered. He opened it and made sure everything was accounted for, especially his journals. He went over to his drawers to grab a change of clothes and some socks to stuff in. He went over to the kitchen and reached behind the stove, unsticking the envelope full of cash he kept there.

He moved mechanically, separating himself from what he was doing. He slowly began to tuck Bucky Barnes back into the box he had resided in all those years in a small corner of his mind, watching like a spectator in his own body. He would be let back out eventually, but for now, he would only make things harder. He put on his coat and clipped the backpack securely across his chest. His eyes swept the apartment again, and they paused on the bed, fighting back thoughts about the small paradise it had become over the last few months.

He needed to leave her something.

He took off his backpack again and took out one of his journals. He ripped out a blank page and hesitated. Everything he possibly wanted to say to her couldn’t be contained on a single page. He thought about writing those three words, the ones he could never say to her face because he couldn’t even accept that he had the right to hear them. At this point, it would only be meaningless and cheap. He didn’t think much longer before he wrote down six words that only began to describe what she had done for him.

_Thank you for being my peace._

He left the note on the pillow before leaving the apartment for good. He crossed the hallway to his neighbor’s door before picking the lock. He knew they wouldn’t be home yet, and the single fire escape the building had was only accessible through their window. He made sure to relock the door before carefully making his way through their dark apartment and to their living room window. He opened it and was greeted by cold wind and droplets from the rain. He climbed out into the wet dusk, closing the window behind him, and he began the descent to the asphalt of the alley down below. Once his feet hit solid ground, he made his way to the avenue that ran parallel to the one in front of the building.

His steps were wavering at first, feeling the tug of everything he was leaving behind, the tug of her. But he found his stride, each step becoming more determined than the next.

He didn’t look back.


	15. Epilogue

O N E Y E A R L A T E R

_Two weeks before the Vienna bombing_

Mona frowned at the picture on Luna’s phone.

“Ew. His name is Kroy,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh come on, he’s not bad,” Luna said, swiping through the other pictures on his Tinder profile. “Look, it says he likes to read. We have that in common,” she tried to say convincingly.

They were in Mona’s office wrapping up a few things before heading home for the night. Well, Mona was going home. Luna was having dinner with the guy she matched with last week.

“He looks like a huge tool,” Mona said, sliding some papers into a manila folder.

“Listen, I’m more concerned about whether or not he _has_ a huge tool,” Luna said, looking at his profile some more.

Mona laughed and shook her head. She packed a few things into her purse and the two of them walked across the Writing Center to the glass doors.

“Don’t you have a hot date tonight, too?” Luna asked jokingly.

Mona grinned. “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s gonna work out. All he does is eat, sleep, poop, and throw up on me.” She gasped and grabbed Luna’s arm. “I forgot to tell you. Guess what he did the other night.”

“What?”

“He slept,” Mona announced proudly.

Luna’s face lit up. “The whole night?”

Mona nodded rapidly. “The whole night. I randomly woke up, so I went to his crib, and he was just sleeping away, not a care in the world.”

Luna squealed, but then she gave her friend a look. “You didn’t go back to sleep,” she said, knowing Mona too well.

Mona shook her head sheepishly. “I stayed up and watched him breathe for the rest of the night.”

“And you called the doctor in the morning.”

“As soon as the office opened up.”

Luna laughed. “Ugh, you’re such a worry-wart,” she said, reaching out to give Mona a hug. “But you’re a good mama. The best.”

Mona sighed deeply, feeling her energy begin to sap from her. “I’m trying,” she said quietly.

Luna pulled back and grabbed her shoulders. “You’re succeeding,” she said firmly.

Mona fought the lump in her throat. No one ever told her that being more emotional was a permanent postnatal side effect.

“Oh crap, I forgot something in the office,” she groaned, turning back towards it.

“Do you want me to wait for you?” Luna asked.

“No, that’s okay. Go get ready for,” she pretended to gag, “Kroy.”

Luna laughed and swatted at her. “Whatever, I’ll see you later. Give my little man a big kiss for me.”

“I will,” Mona said over her shoulder. “Don’t forget to text me about it after, you know I have no life.”

She unlocked her office again and rummaged around until she found what she needed. She locked her office door once more, and made her way to the front, but she looked up and stopped.

Someone was standing between her and the front desk. They were wearing all black and a hood obscured their face in the shadows of the dark of the room.

“I’m sorry…the Writing Center is closed now,” Mona said, her voice trembling. She felt her body grow cold and rigid.

The person said something, but it didn’t sound English.

“What did you say?” Mona asked breathlessly.

The hooded figure lifted their head.

“Hail. HYDRA.”

The person lunged at her, and everything went black. 


	16. Outtakes and Notes

Hiya! I'm so sorry for that ending, but the good news is...there's gonna be a sequel! This fic was the first step back into creative writing for me, and it's the longest story I've written thus far. I'm proud that I actually finished it. There were a few times I was discouraged, but I'm glad I soldiered on. Thanks to everyone for subscribing, bookmarking, and leaving kudos and nice comments! I hope you stick around for the next one!

So, I thought it would be fun to share some outtakes from earlier drafts of a couple of the chapters, kinda like how there's a gag reel that comes with some movies. I learned a lot about myself as a writer, and it was fun seeing the story reshape and evolve. I thought some of you might find it fun too, loll. So, here goes!

_________________________

**This was originally Chapter Eight. I thought it was funny when I wrote it, but I woke up the next morning and hated it, so I made several edits to this chapter. It's really bad, so you're allowed to laugh.**

“I’m kinda hungry,” Mona said, which made them both laugh softly.

They hadn’t left the bed yet, still tangled in the sheets and each other. They lied there facing each other, letting their hands wander against soft places, breathing each other in and coming down from the high they had sustained since their kiss in the car. They were still attached at that saccharine spot where their hips conjoined, the place where humans relied on that glorious friction when their words and emotions failed.

Mona rolled over so that she was on top of him, careful not to break their connection. Her hair fell down around their faces, and their world got even smaller. She placed her lips on his, not really kissing him, only enjoying the feel of them against hers. Bucky ran his hands along the curve of her back and around her shoulders, savoring the warmth of her bare skin.

“You’re amazing,” he managed to mumbled.

“I know,” she said with a shrug, and he laughed again.

Bucky felt completely exposed, as if someone took a thickly bristled brush and stripped off the first two layers of his epidermis. Something in him shattered, something that needed to break, and it propelled him towards her at a deathly speed. He had no control over this feeling; he was walking on the clouds with no parachute, and he should have been afraid, but all he felt was a deep, integral sense of peace that ballooned from his chest and cascaded over the rest of him. He felt torn apart, but not in a destructive way, in a way that would allow for something better to take place, something new.

Mona did begin kissing him then, and she moved her hips deviously to get what she wanted, a moan from him that made every one of her nerve endings stand at attention. She lifted her head and smiled down at him, amazed she could get that reaction out of him. She was as undone as he was. Just then, her stomach growled in signal for them to end their lovefest soon.

“Oh wow, see I told you, I’m starving,” she laughed, which morphed into a gasp. “Shit, oh no," she covered her face with her hand.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I completely forgot that Anna and grandma were waiting for us to eat dinner,” she said getting up from the bed and searching for her underwear. “Anna was almost done cooking when I left to get you and she said they would wait for us, I’m surprised she didn’t--”

There was a knock at the door.

They both stiffened.

There was another knock, this time harder.

“Steve? Steve, are you in there, it’s Anna,” they heard from the other side.

Mona’s mouth hung open before she grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around herself.

“Answer it,” she hissed.

“Why?” he whispered back defiantly.

“So she doesn’t worry,” Mona whispered. “Come on, tell her I’m running an errand.”

Bucky got up and slipped on his boxer briefs and pulled his shirt over his head. Mona tiptoed behind the door and nodded for him to open it.

“Hi, ma’am, how are you?” he said when he did open it, trying to sound as casual as he could.

“ _Mijo_ , I told you to call me Anna,” she said patting his cheek. “Don’t make me feel older than I am,” she said, placing her hand on her hip.

Bucky smiled nervously. “I’m sorry, Anna. What can I do for you?”

“Where’s Mona? Didn’t she pick you up from work?” she asked.

“Yeah she did,” Bucky said, narrowing the open door a bit. “She went to go run an errand, she’ll be back though.”

“But her car’s outside, I checked from the window. That’s why I came up here to see if you were back, it’s been more than an hour. The mill isn’t that far away,” Anna frowned.

Bucky let go of the breath he was holding. “You’re right, I was lying,” he said tightly. He felt Mona shift behind the door. “She’s here actually, in my bathroom. Pooping.”

“Pooping,” Anna echoed.

Bucky nodded gravely. “Yeah. It’s bad. Diarrhea.”

Anna’s face contorted in a mixture of disgust and concern. “Why’d she come up here to do that?”

Bucky was desperately running out of answers. “Um, she was embarrassed. You know, the smell,” he said, waving the air in front of his nose. “She was going to wait until you left, but I told her she could go here. In fact, I shouldn’t even have the door open too long, there’s a draft in here. It can carry the smell.”

Anna stared for a moment. “Oh, well, I hope she feels better. I think her grandma has some Pepto-Bismol. And there’s food downstairs, if you’re hungry.”

Bucky smiled. “Thank you so much Anna, I’ll let her know.”

They said their goodbyes and Bucky shut the door only to be met by Mona’s death glare.

“Diarrhea? Really?”

Bucky held his hands up. “I panicked.”

She began swatting at him, and he ducked her blows before grabbing her and hoisting her over his shoulder. He dropped her on the bed, and she was laughing despite herself.

“Get away from me, you’re the worst liar ever,” she squealed.

_I wish I were,_ he thought, but he dismissed it. He lowered himself on top of her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He kissed her slowly and deeply, rendering her completely useless.

“I’m about to die of starvation,” Mona said, pulling back after a while. “We should go eat.” They got up and scavenged for the rest of their clothing.

“I’ll go down first,” she insisted. “To avoid suspicion.”

“Is this a secret?” Bucky asked as he buckled his jeans.

“Yes, at least for now. I’m honestly not prepared for my grandma’s or my mother’s reaction to the fact that I have a man for the first time in my life,” she said rolling her eyes.

Bucky smiled at the thought of being someone’s “man.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mona warned in spite of the smile on her own face.

She gave him a quick kiss before heading out the door and closing it behind her. Bucky frowned. He walked over to the door and opened it again. He closed it, then opened it again. He did this two more times before shutting it for good. He stood there contemplating.

The deadlatch had a different sound to it, as if the locking mechanism had been tampered with. Bucky could feel his old instincts kicking in. A calm alertness fell over him like it always did when he had a mission to complete. He turned and scanned the room, looking for any discrepancies.

He shook his head. He wasn’t ready to let go of the euphoria of the day. He convinced himself it was nothing, that he would go downstairs and enjoy dinner with Mona and Mrs. Johnson. He strained to push invading thoughts to the back of his mind as he stepped out and headed down the stairs.

He wasn’t ready to admit what might have been inevitable. He didn’t dare to think it. 

  
  


**This was supposed to be the second part of Chapter Nine, but for some reason, I friggin struggled with how to continue this damn fic. This was a scene that I was looking forward to writing since I started this fic, but getting it on the page was awkward (I hated how I wrote Mona’s mother for some reason). As much as I wanted this scene in it, it started to feel forced, I dunno. I knew I wanted to have a wedding scene, and it was going to be her cousin's wedding at first, but there were a whole bunch of things that bothered me, so it became Ameena's wedding instead. Sometimes you just have to let goooo. But here it is, enjoy I guess, loll.**

“Shampoo?”

“Sure, why not.”

Mona grabbed her shampoo bottle off of the hanging caddy and dolloped a good amount of it into her palm. She reached up and placed her hands into Bucky’s damp hair, gently massaging until a sufficient amount of suds began to form. They were in the shower in Mrs. Johnson’s apartment. Mona had gotten home from work ready to wash the day away when Bucky had knocked, treats in hand for her grandmother, but the old lady and Anna were off at the senior recreation center. Mona was in a towel, and they reminisced about their first awkward meeting. This time, though, Mona had expressed concern that her shower would be a little lonesome, and Bucky (ever the gentleman) had offered his assistance in the matter.

“Okay, rinse,” Mona said, and Bucky tilted his head back into the water stream and let the suds fall down his shoulders.

“The children asked for you,” she said amusingly.

Bucky chuckled. “Are they ready for New York?”

“Just about, we’re finalizing everything, but we should be good,” Mona said smiling.

She made sure the last of the shampoo was out of Bucky’s hair before reaching for the conditioner. She massaged it throughout his hair, and he closed his eyes, happy shivers traveling down his spine. Mona wrapped her arms around his waist and watched as water ran down his metal arm while he rinsed the conditioner out. Little rivers formed in its angular grooves and her eyes followed them as they flowed into one another and diverged again, rolling down from his shoulder, to his wrist, and off of his fingertips.

“What’s the star for?” she asked with caution. It was a question she had been wanting to ask for a while, and she somehow found the nerve then.

“It came with the arm,” he said plainly. Although it was subtle, there was a tightness to his voice that let her know she had hit one of his barriers, one of the impenetrable topics that he would refuse to pursue with her. His metal arm was off limits in more ways than one. Mona noticed the way he tried to avoid touching her with it. In the heat of passion, it was hardly noticeable, but it was during those in-between moments she saw how he maneuvered it away from her, how he only ever offered his right hand for her to hold, how he flinched slightly when she touched it unexpectedly. Mona didn’t mind the arm at all (she thought it was cool, in fact) but it wasn’t something he took lightly, she could tell. Truthfully, it bothered her; she wanted him to trust her, but the arm was a reminder that there were parts of him she may never fully know, the things that made the tempest rage behind his eyes. 

“By the way, you made me late for work today, which is unacceptable,” she reprimanded him, changing the subject back to lighter things. 

“Funny, I don’t think it was the word ‘unacceptable’ you were yelling out this morning,” he retorted, the mirth returning to his tone.

She gawked at him and swatted at his chest. “That’s it, you’re cut off.”

He laughed, lifting his head. “From what?”

“This,” she said, gesturing towards herself. “No more, not until you can behave yourself.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Right. Sure. Okay.” He tipped his head back again into the water.

“You don’t believe me?” she challenged him. “Seriously, after this, no more.  _ Nada _ . I spent the last two and half decades without the touch of a man, I think I can survive a few more,” she gave him a tiny shove. He caught her hand against his chest and laughed.

“Huh, then I guess I better make the most out of the rest of this shower,” he said. He lowered his head down and let his lips hover achingly above hers. She tried to resist, to hold her resolve, but she failed, and closed the distance between them. He kissed her tenderly, caressing her cheek with his right hand, and she sighed happily into him. His lips made the pilgrimage down to her neck where he began to suck the soft skin at its base where it met her shoulder. She helplessly relented to him, wondering how on earth she actually did survive without his touch for so long.

“I hate you,” she said weakly, and he only hummed dismissively in reply as he continued his work. 

Just when their mouths and their hands grew hungrier, a voice ripped through the apartment. 

“MAMA?! MONA?! WE’RE HERE!”

They froze and looked at each other in alarm. The voice got closer until it reached the bathroom door and opened it.

“Mona, is that you in here?”

“Mom?” Mona asked incredulously.

“Oh, there you are,” her mother said. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

Mona and Bucky carefully detangled themselves from one another. Mona motioned for Bucky to stay quiet and peeked her head out of the shower curtain.

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

Claudia Morris rolled her eyes at her daughter. She unbuttoned her cream colored wool trench coat and hung it on the door. She took a look at herself in the mirror, making sure her ruby red lipstick wasn’t smudged, and that her smooth, ebony hair was still in order (no one would know by just looking at her, but she had naturally curly hair like her daughter but insisted on straightening it every morning). Claudia closed the lid of the toilet and took a seat. “Is that how you greet your mother?”

Mona sighed. “I’m sorry Mom. Hi, how are you? And what are you doing here? You said you weren’t coming until next week.”

Claudia picked up one of the creams that was on the sink and inspected it before addressing her daughter. “Yes, but Darrel and I decided to come earlier so we could spend more time with you and grandma before the wedding. Surprise!”

Mona let the shower curtain fall back in place. She closed her eyes and tried to wish this horrifying situation away, but when she opened them, she was still there. She looked over at Bucky who was trying to be as still as he could. She thought she noticed the beginnings of a grin on his lips.

“Mom, could you wait for me outside, in the living room? While I finish up in here?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in the shower!”

Claudia scoffed. “Please, I’m your mother, I’ve seen it all. Besides, you need to hear about what this stupid lady did at the airport when we landed,” she said. She interrupted herself when she noticed the pile of clothes on the floor (they were Bucky’s).

“Na-Na, why are these clothes all over floor?” she asked.

“Mom,” Mona tried, but Claudia only interjected. 

“You can’t make a mess of your grandmother’s apartment.” She kneeled and picked the pile up before sitting again and beginning to fold. She held up Bucky’s underwear and looked at them quizzically. “Mona, are these boxer briefs?”

“Mom--”

“Mona, these are boxer briefs.”

“Mother--” 

“These are men’s underwear, Mona. Why on earth do you have men’s underwear?”

“MOM! Yes, those are men’s underwear because I have a man in here!”

Mona had finally dropped the bomb and there was silence on the other side of the curtain. She peeked out and looked at Claudia. Her mother looked back with a shocked expression.

“A…man? In the shower with you?”

Mona nodded. “Say hi to Steve, Mom. You remember him, don’t you?”

“Steve,” Claudia echoed, glancing at the shower curtain as if she were afraid she could see through it.

Bucky cringed on the other side of it. “Hi ma’am.”

At the sound of his voice, Claudia pushed his clothes off her lap and stood up flustered. She could only stare at her daughter with her jaw on the floor.

“Yeeeeaaahhh,” Mona said shrugging. “So…we’re almost done in here. Do you think can you wait in the living room, with Darrel?”

Claudia nodded slowly and backed out of the bathroom, grabbing her coat and closing the door after herself. Mona closed the curtain again and faced Bucky, covering her hand with her mouth. They stared at each other, digesting what had just happened. Bucky pressed his lips together in an effort to contain his amusement, but a chuckle escaped.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Mona said, despite the fact that she was struggling herself. They both couldn’t help it and dissolved into hysterics at the ridiculousness of it all.

They were still beside themselves a little while later when they emerged from Mona’s room fully dressed and into the living room where her parents awaited, though they did their best to seem professional.

“Mom, now I can give you a proper hello,” Mona said, heading to the couch to give her mother a hug. Claudia held a hand up to stop her.

“I do _not_ know where your hands have been,” she said, clearly still scandalized by the events in the bathroom.

“Really Mom? We weren’t even doing anything, and no one told you to just burst in like that,” Mona said, advancing for the hug despite her mother’s protest. Claudia reluctantly drew her daughter to her.

“Tramp,” she muttered not so quietly.

Mona let out a sharp laugh. “Since the moment I turned 18, you and grandma have both ragged on me to get a man, and now that I have one, I’m a tramp?”

“No one told you to fornicate in grandma’s shower! This is your grandmother’s home, not a brothel.”

Mona looked over at Bucky and rolled her eyes. “I’ve graduated to prostitute now, nice.”

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry about all this, it won’t happen again,” Bucky stepped in, offering his hand to Claudia. He gave her his best kilowatt smile and it succeeded in mollifying her.

“I told you, call me Claudia, baby,” she said, getting up and giving him a hug.

“Oh, but you know where his hands have been?” Mona muttered, and her mother shot her a look as she sat back down.

“Sir, it’s nice to see you again,” Bucky said to Darrel who was sitting on the recliner, and they shook hands.

“Steve, my boy, it’s good to see you too,” Darrel said, trying hard not to laugh at the whole situation. He was often entertained by the dysfunction of the family he married into.

“I thought you were allergic to men anyway,” Claudia huffed towards her daughter. It was true, Claudia had urged her daughter in the past to find an acceptable male suitor, but she thought she had more time; she thought she could keep seeing her Na-Na as the little girl with pigtails who had an irrational love of orange slices and stickers. This was just another rude reminder that her only child, her only baby, was a fully-fledged adult.

“I am allergic to men,” Mona insisted. “He’s just the exception,” she nodded towards Bucky.

“Hey!” Darrel exclaimed with feigned jealousy.

“You’re okay too, Darrel,” Mona assured him, playfully rolling her eyes before going over to her step dad and giving him a hug, pressing her cheek against his salt-and-pepper hair.

“I’m assuming this means that Steve will be your plus-one for the wedding?” Claudia asked.

“No,” Mona said forcefully, barely letting her mother finish her sentence.

“Wedding?” Bucky queried.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mona begged.

“Mona! You didn’t invite him to your cousin’s wedding?”

“No, Luna’s coming with me,” she said defiantly. “Trust me, you’ll thank me later,” Mona said to Bucky.

Claudia grunted judgmentally. “Don’t you think the rest of the family would like to meet the man who saved grandma?”

Mona only shrugged.

Claudia reached into her purse and pulled out her compact to check her reflection. “Well, I already told Margaret.”

“You told Aunt Maggie?! Whyyyyyyyy would you do that?” Mona groaned.

“She agreed, she wants him there,” Claudia said, waving her hand to disregard her daughter’s reaction.

“No, he’s not--” Mona was interrupted by her phone buzzing in the pocket of her sweatshirt. She took it out and glanced at the screen before displaying it to her mother. “She’s calling me. Why is she calling me?”

“Just pick it up,” Claudia exasperated.

Mona pinched the bridge of her nose 

  
  


**This was supposed to be Chapter Ten. I wanted Mona and Bucky to have this difficult conversation in the car while Luna was supposedly asleep in the backseat (at the end of the conversation I had wanted her to chime in that she heard the whole thing), but I also wanted them to have a serious conversation at the actual wedding, and I thought that two serious conversations in one chapter would be too tedious. I eventually found a way to add more of a lead up to this conversation, which is how the wedding stretched into two chapters instead of one. I think the final result is soooo much better than this. But here it is, the cow game was pretty cute to write.**

“Cows on my side.”

“What the hell, where?”

“You’re cheating, Bucky, there’s no way.”

“I swear I’m not, they’re right there, look.”

Sure enough, after a few seconds, a pasture whizzed by the passenger’s seat window, and three cows were grazing on it (although they looked more like white dots on the horizon from their vantage point).

“How can you even see those?” Luna asked incredulously.

“You guys just aren’t paying attention,” Bucky said plainly, which was met with emphatic denials from the two women in the car with him.

It was Friday afternoon, and he, Mona, and Luna were just over two hours into their six hour journey into Seattle. The actual wedding was on Saturday, but it had been agreed upon that they should get an early start to give them a little wiggle room for errors. (“Besides, it’ll give us a little extra time on our adventure,” Mona had said excitedly the night before in her room while Bucky watched her pack, and her enthusiasm was contagious). They were piled into Mona’s car, and she was at the wheel, happy to drive the entire way since the reason they were driving in the first place was largely due to her irrational fear of flying. Now, they were playing the cow game, the one where the first person to call out that they spotted cows on their side of the road got a point. So far, Bucky was in the lead with five to zero.

“That’s it, I’m switching sides,” Luna declared, unhooking her seatbelt and sliding over to the seat behind Bucky.

“You’re just gonna leave me?” Mona complained.

“Listen, I gotta do what I gotta do,” Luna replied, hooking herself into the seatbelt again and staring intensely out of the window.

“Traitor,” Mona mumbled, and Bucky laughed, which prompted her to swat at his knee. He dodged her hit and placed his hand just high enough on her thigh to be suggestive, and she couldn’t help the smile that seized her face.

“Oh! Oh!” Luna perked up, but she quickly deflated again. “No, wait, those are sheep.”

Soon, the cow game was abandoned with Bucky as the champion, and Mona and Luna decided it was about time for the karaoke portion of the trip. They belted out lyrics to almost every Beyoncé song under the sun until their voices gave out and Luna passed out in the back seat for a road trip nap. Bucky jovially mentioned that Mona had sung a little too hard during “Single Ladies,” and Mona laughed.

“If Beyoncé says I’m single, I’m single,” Mona joked. “She’s queen.”

“Of what, exactly?” Bucky asked.

Mona gave him a brief disbelieving look. “Of music. Of life in general. I could go on.”

“I’ve heard better,” Bucky said, nonchalantly looking out of his window.

“Bucky, I will crash this car, take it back,” Mona said laughing (she was only half joking).

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s great, but nothing beats the classics,” Bucky said with a chuckle.

“Okay then, if you know so much, pick a song Mr. …” Mona trailed off. She frowned at the traffic ahead of them.

“Beefcake?” Bucky tried to finish for her.

“No,” she said, her tone suddenly serious. “No, I was about to call you by your last name, but…then I realized I don’t know your last name.”

They both fell silent, the muted hum of the engine filling the space. The revelation hung between them like a broken tree limb severed by a violent strike of lightning; it was a confrontation of all the things they knew but didn’t say, everything they had danced around for the sake of ease and peace and diversion.

Bucky fought the urge to shut down and run away, to curl into himself with the excuse that it would protect her. He turned his head and stared at her profile.

“Does that bother you?” he asked. An invitation.

Mona took a deep breath. “Kind of, I guess,” she said tightly. Bucky waited. “How do I not know your last name?” she asked more to herself than to him.

He looked down at his hands and wrung them together.

“I know you,” she said firmly. “I know I do. I know that…you like your coffee black, which is just ridiculous, what are you trying to prove,” she allowed herself to grin at that. “And I know that you hate when doors are ajar, it’s one of your pet peeves, they should be opened or closed. I know that you like to sleep with one foot out of the blanket. I know that you like to walk home from work because you don’t want to miss out on the world from the inside of a bus,” a desperate edge creeped into her voice.

“I know that you’re a cat person because you feed the stray ones by our building,” Mona continued to recite. “I know that you’re one of those weird people who taste soap when they eat cilantro. You’re an absolute nerd when it comes to space, but you hate to think about what’s at the bottom of the ocean. I know how you like to be touched, I know how you taste,” she gripped the wheel a bit tighter. “But I don’t know your last name. I don’t know where you grew up, or how many sisters you have and what they’re like. I don’t what your favorite subject was in school, or what you dreamed of being when you grew up, or why you decided to join the military. It’s like I know all these little fragments, and if I piece them together, they form a somewhat cohesive picture of you, but there are still these gaping holes.” The last part had come out in a rush, Mona unleashing everything she had been too afraid to broach before.

Bucky was silent for a while and Mona held her breath, waiting for his rejection, for him to push her back to a safe distance, to seal the cracks of his dam that she had sworn were getting longer and wider before this.

“Barnes,” he said finally.

Her heart skipped a beat at the name. She gave him a quick look before returning her eyes to the road. “Like Barnes and Noble?”

He laughed quietly, a short huff of air that was just barely perceptible. “There’s no relation as far as I know, but yes.”

“Bucky Barnes,” she said, wrapping her lips around each syllable. She smiled. “I like the alliteration.”

“And I grew up in Brooklyn,” he added. Each word came out easier than the one before it. “And I have four younger sisters. You remind me of one them, actually.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, my youngest one, Becca,” he said. He smiled despite the dull ache in his chest. “She was a spitfire, always had an answer to everything, and if you told her she couldn’t do something she’d do anything to prove you wrong, especially if you thought it was because she was a girl. She climbed a tree once just because I told her no,” he laughed and shook his head. “Broke her leg right in half.”

Mona’s smile got wider. It was jarring, hearing him talk so openly. She felt like she had pulled back a curtain and saw what was forbidden, unseen.

“I’d like to meet her someday,” she said.

“She’s dead.”

He said it frankly, and the curtain closed again. He didn’t know if that was actually true, but it might as well have been. Quiet descended again, but Bucky didn’t retreat. Mona deserved better.

“Mona, you do know me,” he tuned in his seat to face her. “The way I see it, there are two versions of me. The me that I was before the war, and the me that I am now, everything in between is a blur. When I think back to before, when I remember…it feels like I’m thinking of another world, like someone put those memories in my head to help me hold on to something. It barely seems real, even though I know it all happened. And the me after,” he sighed. “I’m still trying to figure that out. You know about as much as I do.”

Mona bit her top lip, guilt creeping in. She wanted to hear all this, but she hadn’t meant to push him. Over the last few months, she had let him in more ways than one, breaking down barrier after barrier and allowing him to carve out a Bucky-shaped depression in her life. Part of her felt entitled to hear what he was saying, but the other part of her didn’t want to dredge up his demons. She wanted to be his balm, the remedy, but she also knew she wanted to be more than that.

“I know you too,” Bucky said, his voice becoming lighter.

“Enlighten me,” Mona prompted, the corners of her mouth tipping upward.

________________________

I hope you enjoyed those really bad outtakes, loll. For the next part, I kinda want to have a few chapters under my belt before posting. I wrote this one chapter by chapter, and I would post each one right after I finished, which was fun, but I found myself wishing I could go back and change some things. Thanks again for sticking with this, and me! The Bucky fandom is so great, I'm glad I finally realized what an amazing character he is (which has been one of the only good things about this whole pandemic loll). Let me know what you think, even if you wanna yell at me for that cliffhanger!

Also, for those of you wondering about the title, Gethsemane was the name of the garden Jesus spent his last night alive in. It was also where he was betrayed by Judas and led away to his death. It's kind of a heavy reference for a fanfic, loll, but I found it interesting to think of that garden being a peaceful sanctuary, but also a site of pain and anguish, and I feel like Bearhooke was like that for Bucky here. I really didn't mean to make it biblical, but I couldn't think of a better title, oh well loll. 


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